Minsitrel  Weather 

by 
Marian  Storm 


LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  DIEGO 


I 


>  ^ 


Ju>  ^ 

t-+  *44+   -' 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 
By  Marian  Storm 


Minstrel  Weather 


BY 
MARIAN  STORM 

With  Illustrations  and  Decorations 
By  Clinton  Balmer  _ 


Knowledge,  we  are  not  foes. 

Long  hast  thou  toiled  with  me; 
But  the  world  with  a  great  wind  blows. 
Crying,  and  not  of  theel 

EURIPIDES 


HARPER  y  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 
NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

Copyright,  1920,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  November,  1020 


For 
AMY  LOVEMAN 

Tlie  Minstrel  Made  His  Tune 
of  Hours  and  Seasons 

Dew/all,  moonrise,  high  sweet  clover, 
Chimney  swifts  at  their  twilight  play; 

Quail  call,  owl  hoot,  moth  a-koverr 
Midnight  pale  at  the  step  of  day, 

Star  wane,  cobweb,  brown-plumed  bracken; 

Morning  laughs,  with  the  frost  in  flower; 
Duck  flight,  hound  cry;   wild  grapes  blacken. 

Day  leaps  up  at  the  amber  hour. 

Sun  dark,  snowcloud,  eaves  ice  cumbered, 
Gray  sand  piled  on  a  carmine  West; 

Faint  wing,  flake  dance;    winds  unnumbered 
Swing  the  cradles  where  leaf-buds  rest. 

Wide  light,  bough  flush,  gold-fringed  meadows, 

Berries  red  in  the  rippled  grass; 
Stream  song,  nest  note,  dream  deep  shadows 

Drawn  back  slowly  for  noon  to  pass. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PAGE 

I.  FACES  OP  JANUS 1 

II.  A  WOODLAND  VALENTINE 7 

III.  WAYS  OF  THE  MARCH  HARE 13 

IV.  THE  APRIL  MOMENT 19 

V.  THE  CREST  OP  SPRING 25 

VI.  HAY  HARVEST  TIME 31 

VII.  THE  MONTH  OF  YELLOW  FLOWERS      .     .  37 

VIII.  THE  MOOD  OF  AUGUST 43 

IX.  SUMMER  PAUSES 48 

X.  WHEN  THE  OAKS  WEAR  DAMSON     ...  54 

XI.  NOVEMBER  TRAITS 60 

XII.  THE  CHRISTMAS  WOODS 66 

XIII.  LANDSCAPES  SEEN  IN  DREAMS     ....  72 

XIV.  HIDING  PLACES 78 

XV.  THE  PLAY  OF  LEAVES 84 

XVI.  THE  BROWN  FRONTIER 90 

XVII.  FAR  ALTARS  .                                                .  96 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE  MILKY  WAY  REVEALED  TO  LONELY 


Frontispiece 

THE    COMFORTING    SYMBOLISM    OF    FIRE- 

LIGHT AT  PLAY  UPON  CLEAN  HEARTHS  Facing  P.    4 
T.HE  POWERS  OF  LIGHT  .......       "       10 

ON  THE  TOPMOST  BOUGHS  THE   FAIRIES 

SLEEP      ...........       "       26 

THE  REJOICING  SHOUT  OF  COMING  SUMMER       '  '       28 
THE  SWOOPING  BAT  DARTS  NOISELESSLY       "       34 
Now  THE  MOUNTAINEER'S  GIRL  HURRIES 
INDOORS    AT    NIGHTFALL    FROM    THE 
HALLOOING    SPECTER   OF   THE    WILD 
HUNTSMAN  IN  THE  CLOUDS  ....       "       54 

BALDWINS  MELLOW  BY  TWELFTH-NIGHT   .       "       58 
DECEMBER  ACKNOWLEDGES  AN  UNPITYING 

FATE  —  ANYTHING  MAY  HAPPEN     ,  "68 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 


MINSTREL   WEATHER     ««     CHAPTER 
I.     FACES  OF  JANUS  ^  'S? 

|  HOUGH  January  has  days 
that  dress  in  saffron  for  their 
going,  and  noons  of  yellow 
light,  foretelling  crocuses,  the 
month  is  yet  not  altogether, 
friendly.  The  year  is  moving  now  to- 
ward its  most  unpitying  season.  Nights 
that  came  on  kindly  may  turn  the  meadows 
to  iron,  tear  off  the  last  faithful  leaves 
from  oaks,  drive  thick  clouds  across  the 
moon,  to  end  in  a  violent  dawn.  January 
holds  gentle  weather  in  one  hand  and  bliz- 
zards in  the  other,  and  what  a  blizzard  can 
be  only  dwellers  on  prairies  or  among  the 
mountains  know.  Snow  gone  mad,  its 
2  HI 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

legions  rushing  across  the  land  with  dag- 
gers drawn,  furious,  bearing  no  malice,  but 
certainly  no  compassion,  and  overwhelm- 
ing all  creatures  abroad :  bewildered  flocks, 
birds  half  frozen  on  their  twigs,  cattle 
unwisely  left  on  shelterless  ranges,  and 
people  who  lose  the  way  long  before 
animals  give  up.  Snow  hardly  seems  made 
of  fairy  stars  and  flowers  when  its  full 
terror  sweeps  Northern  valleys  or  the  in- 
terminable solitudes  of  the  plains.  The 
gale  so  armed  for  attack  owns  something 
of  the  wicked  intention  which  Conrad  says 
that  sailors  often  perceive  in  a  storm  at 
sea.  The  rider  pursued  by  a  blizzard  may 
feel,  like  the  tossed  mariner,  that  "these 
elemental  forces  are  coming  at  him  with 
a  purpose,  with  an  unbridled  cruelty  which 
means  to  sweep  the  whole  precious  world 
away  by  the  simple  and  appalling  act  of 
taking  his  life."  We  do  not  smile  at  the 
pathetic  fallacy  when  we  are  alone  with 
cold.  The  overtaken  mountaineer  under- 
stands— it  means  to  get  him.  These  things 
happen  in  places  where  weather  is  not 
obedient  to  wraps  and  furnaces,  but  where 
it  must  be  fought  hand  to  hand  and  where 
the  pretty  snow  tangles  its  victim's  feet 

[2] 


FACES    OF  JANUS 

and  slowly  puts  him  to  sleep  in  a  delicious 
dream  of  warmth.  Tropical  lightning  has 
not  the  calm  omnipotence  of  cold  when 
it  walks  lonely  ways. 

January  knows  days  on  which  the  haze 
of  spring  and  the  dun  tenderness  of  the 
sunshine  tempt  the  rabbit  to  try  another 
nap  al  fresco,  indiscreet  though  he  knows 
it  to  be.  Even  the  woodchuck  must  turn 
over  and  sniff  in  his  sleep  as  the  thaw 
creeps  downward;  and  the  muskrat  takes 
his  safe  way  by  water  once  more,  while  the 
steel  trap  waits  on  the  bank,  to  be  sprung 
humanely  by  a  falling  cone.  The  lithe  red 
fox  glides  across  the  upper  pastures  and 
weaves  among  the  hardhack  unchallenged, 
for  this  is  not  hunting  weather.  A  fleet- 
ing respite  comes  to  the  tormented  mink. 
Toward  the  last  of  the  month,  innocent 
of  the  February  and  March  to  come,  pussy 
willows,  ingenuously  deceived  by  the 
brief  mildness,  come  out  inquisitively  and 
stand  in  expectation  beside  the  brook, 
convinced  that  this  ice  is  only  left  over — 
what  can  have  delayed  the  garnet-veined 
skunk's  cabbage,  always  on  hand  the 
first  of  all?  So  many  willows  are  needed 
by  the  florists  that  perhaps  they  do  not 
13] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

pay  heavily  for  their  premature  debut. 
But  they  are  all  gray  now.  In  March 
they  show  a  cloudy  crimson  and  yellow 
not  alone  of  the  final  blossom,  but  of  their 
fur.  There  are  plenty  of  scarlet  rose  hips 
in  uplifted  clusters,  for  the  birds  some- 
how neglect  them  while  they  pursue  other 
delicacies  of  the  same  color  and  contour. 
Nature  has  probably  told  the  winter  chip- 
pies that  rose  hips  are  no  good — spring  dec- 
orations must  not  be  pilfered  by  the  snow 
sprites.  Puffballs  have  broken  off  from  old 
logs,  and  in  walking  through  low  woods 
you  may  step  on  one  here  and  there, 
awakening  the  fancy  that  the  world  is 
burning,  under  its  sad  cloak  of  sepia  leaves, 
and  sending  up  small  puffs  of  smoke  to 
warn  those  who  have  trodden  it  in  love 
and  comprehension. 

When  the  winsome  skies  turn  stony, 
and  melancholy  winter  rain  ends  in  chill 
mist,  January  has  days  to  breathe  whose 
air  is  like  breathing  under  water,  down  in 
spring-cold  lake,  where  the  incredible, 
pleasureless  fishes  move  through  their  gray 
element,  finding  pallid  amusement  perhaps 
in  nudging  frogs  and  turtles,  well  tucked 
up  under  a  blanket  of  mud.  They  are 
[4] 


FACES  OF  JANUS 

cold-blooded,  of  course,  and  not  supposed 
to  mind  the  oppressiveness  of  the  liquid 
atmosphere.  But  after  ourselves  moving 
in  such  an  environment  it  is  marvelous  to 
ponder  that  any  creatures  prefer  it,  and 
good  to  foreknow  that  our  own  world  will 
swim  out  into  a  splendid  frosty  weather. 

For  its  days  of  quiet  sparkle  we  would 
remember  January,  not  for  lashing  tem- 
pests, April  delusions,  or  brooding  fog. 
Unbroken  snow  with  blazing  spangles 
shifting  as  the  sun  moves,  and  above  it 
twittering  sparrows  clinging  by  one  claw 
to  stalks  of  yarrow  or  mustard  while  they 
shake  the  seeds  loose  with  the  other;  old 
stone  walls  suddenly  demonstrating  that 
they  have  color,  when  the  foreground  is 
white,  and  showing  bluish,  brown,  earthen 
red,  and  gray  alight  with  mica;  streams 
covered  with  pearly  ice  that  floods  into 
brilliant  orange  at  sunset ;  spruce  and  hem- 
lock imperiously  outlined  on  even  far-off 
hills;  skating-time  without  and  kindled 
logs  within — that  is  the  midwinter  we  re- 
member when  the  sterner  messengers  sped 
from  the  Pole  have  gone  again.  Were  it 
not  for  the  blizzard  we  might  fail  to  know 
so  well  the  comforting  symbolism  of  fire- 
15J 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

light  at  play  upon  clean  hearths.  Many 
go  all  their  lives,  aware  only  of  the  coziness 
or  inconvenience  of  winter,  never  facing 
the  daggered  gale  alone,  nor  struck  by  the 
terror  of  a  hostile  Nature  or  the  awe  of 
cold  that  may  not  soon  relent.  What  one 
perceives  in  the  volcano,  tidal  wave,  or 
blizzard,  another  is  spared;  the  lesson, 
perhaps,  being  postponed  until  he  is  ready 
for  it.  Spring  comes  sweetly  to  the  mil- 
liners' this  month.  To  the  wilderness 
with  rapid  and  menacing  step  comes  full 
winter. 


16] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER     1?     CHAPTER 
II.     A  WOODLAND  VALENTINE        "$ 

)RCES  astir  in  the  deepest 
roots  grow  restless  beneath, 
the  lock  of  frost.  Bulbs  try, 
the  door.  February's  still- 
ness is  charged  with  a  faint 
anxiety,  as  if  the  powers  of  light,  pressing 
up  from  the  earth's  center  and  streaming 
down  from  the  stronger  sun,  had  troubled 
the  buried  seeds,  who  strive  to  answer 
their  liberator,  so  that  the  guarding  mother 
must  whisper  over  and  over,  "Not  yet, 
not  yet!"  Better  to  stay  behind  the 
frozen  gate  than  to  come  too  early  up  into  > 
realms  where  the  wolves  of  cold  are  still 
aprowl.  Wisely  the  snow  places  a  white 
17] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

hand  over  eager — life  unseen,  but  perceived 
in  February's  woods  as  a  swimmer  feels 
the  changing  moods  of  water  in  a  lake  fed 
by  springs.  Only  the  thick  stars,  closer 
and  more  companionable  than  in  months 
of  foliage,  burn  alert  and  serene.  In  Feb- 
ruary the  Milky  Way  is  revealed  divinely 
lucent  to  lonely  peoples — herdsmen,  moun- 
taineers, fishermen,  trappers — who  are 
abroad  in  the  starlight  hours  of  this  grave 
and  silent  time  of  year.  It  is  in  the  long, 
frozen  nights  that  the  sky  has  most  red/ 
flowers. 

February  knows  the  beat  of  twilight 
wings.  Drifting  north  again  come  birds 
who  only  pretended  to  forsake  us — adven- 
turers, not  so  fond  of  safety  but  that  they 
dare  risk  finding  how  snow  bunting  and 
pine  finch  have  plundered  the  cones  of  the 
evergreens,  while  chickadees,  sparrows,  and 
crows  are  supervising  from  established 
stations  all  the  more  domestic  supplies 
available4,  a  sparrow  often  making  it  pos- 
sible to  annoy  even  a  duck  out  of  her* 
share  of  cracked  corn.  Ranged  along  a 
brown-draped  oak  branch  in  the  waxing 
light,  crows  show  a  lordly  glistening  of 

feathers.     (Sun  on  a  sweeping  wing  in. 
18] 


A  WOODLAND  VALENTINE 

flight  has  the  quality  of  sun  on  a  ripple.) 
Where  hemlocks  gather,  deep  in  somber 
woods,  the  great  horned  owl  has  thus  soon, 
perhaps  working  amid  snows  at  her  task, 
built  a  nest  wherein  March  will  find  sturdy 
balls  of  fluff.  The  thunderous  love  song 
of  her  mate  sounds  through  the  timber. 
By  the  time  the  wren  has  nested  these 
winter  babies  will  be  solemn  with  the 
wisdom  of  their  famous  race. 

There  is  no  season  like  the  end  of  Feb- 
ruary for  cleaning  out  brooks.  Hastening 
yellow  waters  toss  a  dreary  wreckage  of 
torn  or  ashen  leaves,  twigs,  acorn  cups, 
stranded  rafts  of  bark,  and  buttonballs 
from  the  sycamore,  never  to  come  to  seed. 
Standing  on  one  bank  or  both,  according 
to  the  sundering  flood's  ambition,  the 
knight  with  staff  and  bold  forefinger  sets 
the  water  princess  free.  She  goes  then 
curtsying  and  dimpling  over  the  shining 
gravel,  sliding  from  beneath  the  ice  that 
roofs  her  on  the  uplands  down  to  the  softer  • 
valleys,  where  her  quickened  step  will  be 
heard  by  the  frogs  in  their  mansions  of 
mud,  and  the  fish,  recluses  in  rayless  pools, 
will  rise  to  the  light  she  brings. 

Down  from   the  frozen  mountains,  in 
[9] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

summer,  birds  and  winds  must  bear  the 
seed  of  alpine  flowers — lilies  that  lean 
against  unmelting  snows,  poppies,  bright- 
colored  herbs,  and  the  palely  gleaming, 
fringed  beauties  that  change  names  with, 
countries.  How  just  and  reasonable  it 
would  seem  to  be  that  flowers  which  edge 
the  ice  in  July  should  consent  to  bloom 
in  lowlands  no  colder  in  February!  The 
pageant  of  blue,  magenta,  and  scarlet  on 
the  austere  upper  slopes  of  the  Rockies, 
where  nights  are  bitter  to  the  summer 
wanderer — why  should  it  not  flourish  to 
leeward  of  a  valley  barn  in  months  when 
icicles  hang  from  the  eaves  in  this  tamer 
setting?  But  no.  Mountain  tempests  are 
}  endurable  to  the  silken-petaled.  The 
treacherous  lowland  winter,  with  its  coax- 
ing suns  followed  by  roaring  desolation, 
is  for  blooms  bred  in  a  different  tradi- 
tion. 

The  light  is  clear  but  hesitant,  a  delicate 
wine,  by  no  means  the  mighty  vintage  of 
April.  February  has  no  intoxication;  the 
vague  eagerness  that  gives  the  air  a  pulse 
where  fields  lie  voiceless  comes  from  the 
secret  stirring  of  imprisoned  life.  Spring 
and  sunrise  are  forever  miracles,  but  the 

[10] 


A  WOODLAND  VALENTINE 

early  hour  of  the  wonder  hardly  hints  the 
exuberance  of  its  fulfillment.  Even  the 
forest  dwellers  move  gravely,  thankful  for 
any  promise  of  kindness  from  the  lord  of 
day  as  he  hangs  above  a  sea-gray  land- 
scape, but  knowing  well  that  their  long 
duress  is  not  yet  to  end.  Deer  pathet- 
ically haunt  the  outskirts  of  farms,  gazing 
upon  cattle  feeding  hi  winter  pasture  from 
the  stack,  and  often,  after  dark,  clearing 
the  fences  and  robbing  the  same  di- 
sheveled storehouse.  Not  a  chipmunk 
winks  from  the  top  rail.  The  woodchuck, 
after  his  single  expeditionary  effort  on 
Candlemas,  which  he  is  obliged  to  make 
for  mankind's  enlightenment,  has  retired 
without  being  seen,  in  sunshine  or  shadow, 
and  has  not  the  slightest  intention  of  dis- 
turbing himself  just  yet.  Though  snow- 
drops may  feel  uneasy,  he  knows  too  much 
about  the  Ides  of  March!  Quietest  of  all 
Northern  woods  creatures,  the  otter  slides 
from  one  ice-hung  waterfall  to  the  next. 
The  solitary  scamperer  left  is  the  cotton- 
tail, appealing  because  he  is  the  most 
pursued  and  politest  of  the  furry;  faith- 
fully trying  to  give  no  offense,  except  when 
starvation  points  to  winter  cabbage,  he  is 
[ill 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

none  the  less  fey.    So  is  the  mink,  though 
he  moves  like  a  phantom. 

Mosses,  whereon  March  in  coming  treads 
first,  show  one  hue  brighter  in  the  swamps. 
Pussy  willows  have  made  a  gray  dawn  in 
viny  caverns  where  the  day's  own  dawn 
looks  in  but  faintly,  and  the  flushing  of 
the  red  willow  betrays  reveries  of  a  not 
impossible  cowslip  upon  the  bank  beneath. 
The  blue  jay  has  mentioned  it  in  the  course 
of  his  voluble  recollections.  He  is  unwill- 
ing to  prophesy  arbutus,  but  he  will  just 
hint  that  when  the  leaves  in  the  wood  lot 
show  through  snow  as  early  as  this .  .  . 
Once  he  found  a  hepatica  bud  the  last  day 
of  February  .  .  .  Speaking  with  his  old 
friend,  the  muskrat,  last  week  .  .  .  And 
when  you  can  see  red  pebbles  in  the  creek 
at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  .  .  .  But* 
it  is  no  use  to  expect  yellow  orchids  on  the 
west  knoll  this  spring,  for  some  people 
found  them  there  last  year,  and  after  that 
you  might  as  well  ...  Of  course  cowslips 
beside  red  willows  are  remarkably  pretty, 
just  as  blue  jays  in  a  cedar  with  blue  berries. 
.  . .  He  is  intef  minable,  but  then  he  has  seen 
a  great  deal  of  life.  And  February  needs  her 
blue  jays'  unwearied  and  conquering  faith. 

[12] 


MINSTREL    WEATHER     •$     CHAPTER 
III.       WAYS   OF   THE   MARCH   HARE 

ILLOW  him  to  the  woods 
and  you  know  his  fascina- 
tion, but  never  give  the 
March  hare  a  reference  for 
sobriety.  His  reputation  can- 
not be  rehabilitated,  yet  his  intimates  love 
him  in  spite  of  it.  He  is  such  an  accom- 
plished tease !  He  wakens,  playful  and  in- 
gratiating, with  the  sun;  he  skips  cajolingly 
among  the  crocuses;  and  before  an  hour 
passes  he  is  rushing  about  the  fields  in  a 
fury,  scattering  the  worn-out,  brown  grass- 
es, scaring  the  first  robins,  and  bouncing 
over  the  garden  fence  to  break  the  necks  of 
any  tulips  deceived  by  his  morning  mood. 
Impossible  animal,  he  is  an  eccentric  born, 
glorying  in  his  queerness;  and  none  the 
3  [13] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

less,  there  are  some  who  think  he  knows 
the  zest  of  life  better  than  April's  in- 
fatuated starling  or  the  woodchuck  drows- 
ing in  May  clover.  He  loves  to  kick  the 
chilly  brooks  into  foam  and  fluster  them 
until  they  run  over  their  unthawed  banks 
and  tear  downhill  and  through  the  swamp 
to  alarm  the  rivers,  so  that  they,  too,  come 
out  on  land  and  the  whole  world  looks  as 
though  it  had  gone  back  to  the  watery 
beginning.  He  chases  north  the  snowy 
owl,  ornament  of  our  winter  woods,  and 
fraternizes  with  the  sinful  sparrow.  Shrike 
and  grosbeak  leave,  saying  that  really  it 
is  growing  quite  warm,  and,  glancing  be- 
hind them,  they  behold  the  March  hare 
turning  somersaults  in  snowdrifts.  He 
freezes  the  mud  that  the  shore  lark  was 
enjoying.  No  one  depends  upon  him. 
^et,  to  see  swift  and  enchanting  changes 
of  sky,  lake,  and  woodland,  go  forth  with 
the  March  hare  and  find  with  him,  better 
than  quiet,  the  earth  astir. 

Trees  lose  the  archaic  outline  as  leaf 
buds  swell.  Reddened  maples  and  black 
ash  twigs,  yellow  flowers  on  the  willow, 
begin  the  coloring  of  a  landscape  that  will 
not  fade  to  gray  and  dun  again  until 

[14] 


WAYS  OF  THE  MARCH  HARE 

December  comes.  The  lilacs  are  growing 
impatient,  for  already  the  sophisticated 
city  lilac  bush  is  wearing  costly  bloom, 
careless  that  a  debut  made  so  early  early-- 
ends.  The  crocuses,  spring's  opening  ballet, 
dressed  in  pastel  tints,  take  their  places 
on  the  lawn,  standing  delicately  erect, 
waiting  for  bird  music.  Unknown  to 
March's  gales,  the  still  swamp  pools  are 
fringed  with  shooting  green,  full  of  hints 
of  cowslips;  and  arbutus — few  know  on 
what  hillsides — is  lifting  the  warm  leaf 
blanket,  trusting  that  vandal  admirers  are 
far  away.  The  March  violet  is  sung  more 
than  seen,  visiting  Northern  slopes  and 
woods  hollows  only  by  caprice,  but  all  the 
legends  lingering  over  it,  and  the  magic 
beauty  it  gives  to  maidens  who  gather  it 
at  dawn,  make  the  violet  still,  for  lyrical 
needs,  the  flower  of  March.  Cuddled  close 
to  sun-warmed  stones,  cloaked  by  quaint 
leaves  lined  with  sapphire  and  maroon, 
sometimes  now  the  hepatica  has  come;  and 
bloodroot  nested  under  bowlders,  and  in 
fence  corners  where  the  sun  is  faithful,  lifts 
praying,  exquisite  petals  that  open  swiftly 
from  the  slim  bud  and  are  scattered  by  a 
touch.  The  dark  blue  grape  hyacinth 
US] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

stands  calm  in  winds  and  bitter  weather; 
waist-deep  in  snow,  it  proudly  holds  its 
ground.  Sap  is  visibly  climbing  to  the 
highest  limbs.  It  seems  even  to  be 
mounting  in  the  ancient  wild-grape  vines 
that  swing  from  the  roof  of  the  wood, 
bearing  no  buds  and  looking  dead  a  hun- 
dred years,  though  there  is  life  beneath 
the  somber  and  shaggy  bark.  Sap  called 
back  through  the  ducts  of  the  winter- 
warped  thorn,  solitary  in  the  clearing 
where  the  cruel  nor'easter  raced,  will 
cover  the  sad  branches,  once  the  soft 
days  are  here,  with  shining  blossoms.  The 
year  turns  when  the  sap  runs.  Little  boys 
who  have  their  sugar  maples  picked  out 
and  under  guard,  being  more  forehanded 
about  some  things  than  others,  are  whit-_ 
tling  intensely. 

Loneliest  of  all  sounds,  the  "peepers" 
take  up  their  forsaken  song  in  flooded 
meadows,  silenced  in  ghostly  fashion  by  a 
footstep  that  comes  near.  Heartbroken  - 
chant,  it  is  more  elegy  than  spring  song, 
hard  to  hear  at  dusk,  yet  it  is  certain  that 
those  peepers  are  delighted  that  March 
is  here — as  content  with  their  fate,  while 
they  utter  the  poignant  notes,  as  the  em- 

[16] 


WAYS  OF  THE  MARCH  HARE 

phatic  old  frogs  by  the  deeper  water. 
Wander-birds,  almost  unresting,  are  post- 
ing north  again  through  the  twilights. 
Bold  wild  geese  are  awing  for  Canada. 
Quiet  returning  hawks  cross  the  valleys, 
and  the  pine  grosbeak  hastens  past. 
Spring  dowers  the  devoted  but  undesired 
starling  with  a  pleasant  voice  which  will 
change  by  summer  into  an  exasperating 
croak,  and  so  many  of  our  birds  suffer  this 
unfair  loss  that  a  feathered  critic  would 
have  good  reason  to  declare  that  poets 
ought  to  be  slain  in  youth.  The  terrifying 
little  screech  owl  wails  from  shadowy 
woods,-  and  from  the  venerable  timber 
sounds  the  horned  owl's  obscure  threat. 
The  chickadee  repeats  with  natural  pride 
his  charming  repertoire  of  two  notes — 
" Spring  soon!"  Nothing  is  refused  this 
fortunate  one,  born  with  a  sweet  disposi-  r 
tion  and  a  winsome  song,  while  sparrows, 
angrily  conducting  their  courtships,  re- 
main on  earth  solely  by  dint  of  original 
cleverness. 

Meadow  mole  and   turtle,   woodchuck 
and  chipmunk,  are  recovering  from  a  three 
months'  nap,  waiting  patiently  in  the  sun- 
shine for  the  season   to  begin.     Snakes 
[17] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

come  out  with  the  rest  of  the  yawning 
company.  Fish  glitter  again  in  the  hurry- 
ing streams,  building  their  nests  and  houses 
like  the  others — often  obeying  a  spring 
impulse  to  rush  from  lake  to  outlet  or 
from  quiet  water  to  streamhead,  ending 
their  journey  suddenly  and  forever  amid 
wire  meshes.  The  brooks  are  icy  on  the 
mildest  days  with  melted  snow  from  the 
mountains,  where  hemlocks  green  as  arctic 
waters,  shutting  out  the  sun,  keep  a  white 
floor  long  after  the  valley  wears  grasses. 

Whoever  has  a  touch  of  madness  to 
lend  him  sympathy  with  the  March  hare 
likes  the  bewildering  days  through  which 
he  scampers  to  vanish  at  the  edge  of  April. 
Rebellious,  whitening  ponds  and  wind-bent 
trees;  defiant  buds  and  all  the  kindled 
life  of  marsh,  hill,  and  woodland,  set  free 
once  more  from  cold,  but  not  from  dread — 
hear  at  the  coming  of  the  mighty  month 
their  promise  of  release.  But  only  to 
comrades  who  will  run  with  him  through 
muddy  lanes  and  tangled  brush  does  he 
show  his  treasures:  forest  creatures  sped 
like  the  couriers,  petals  lifted  like  the 
banners,  of  life  resurgent. 

[181 


MINSTREL   WEATHER    1?     CHAPTER 
IV.     THE   APRIL   MOMENT        *%        °$ 

1URVIVOR  of  ao  much  that 
her  fear  is  gone,  triumphant 
April  answers  the  dark 
powers  as  if  they  could  never 
speak  again.  Spring  after 
spring  she  stands  among  flying  petals  and 
smiles  at  the  last  bitter  winds.  She  will 
not  grant  that  the  green  earth  was  ever 
vanquished,  fiercely  alive  as  now  it  is. 
Scornfully  the  new  silver  bloom  on  the 
clover  sheds  the  relentless  rain.  Un- 
daunted, reaffirming,  she  summons  all 
beauty  of  color,  music,  and  fragrance  be- 
neath her  banners,  with  a  vitality  so  pro- 
Jound  and  impregnable  that  more  than 
1191 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

other  months  she  is  careless  of  man's 
sympathy.  April,  preoccupied,  hastens 
from  crumbling  furrow  to  meadows  that 
shout  the  coming  of  the  green.  Intense 
and  too  eager  for  tenderness,  she  craves 
no  admiration.  Quite  without  excuse,  the 
song  sparrow  sits  on  a  wine-colored  willow 
twig  and  sings  frantically.  Anyone  has 
as  good  a  reason  for  ecstasy  as  he — merely 
that  the  dumb  struggle  is  ended  and  the 
long  suns  have  returned  in  splendor. 

Contemplative  between  their  dark  ex- 
otic leaves,  dogtooth  violets  fill  the  light- 
flecked  hollows.  Spring  beauties  open 
warily  at  daybreak  to  show  stamens  of 
deep  rose.  Where  imperious  amber  waters 
go  foaming  through  the  swamp,  spend- 
thrift gold  of  cowslips  is  swept  down  to 
the  rivers,  and  budded  branches  that 
leaned  too  close  above  the  ripple  are  shut- 
out from  the  sun  world  for  a  while.  Mauve 
and  canary  slippers  are  waiting  for  the 
fairy  queen  where  our  wild  orchid  of  the 
North  dangles  them  on  remote  knolls,  but 
they  are  usually  found  and  borne  off  by 
some  one  for  whom  they  are  in  no  way 
suitable.  Translucent  young  leaves  glitter 
beside  the  stream's  path.  Dandelion  ro- 

[20] 


THE  APRIL   MOMENT 

settes  appear  with  serene  impartiality  on 
guarded  lawn  and  mountain  pasture,  where 
steal  also  the  polite  but  persistent  "pussy 
tiptoes,"  asserting  the  right  to  display 
white  leaves  in  spring,  if  so  a  plant  should 
choose.  The  snail  has  deserted  his  shell 
and  gone  forth  to  take  the  air  at  the  risk 
of  being  plowed  under.  None  of  April's/ 
children  remember  or  foresee.  The  vivid 
present  is  enough. 

The  apple  boughs  are  inlaid  with  coral. 
The  peach  is  a  cloud  of  dawn,  and  petals 
of  the  forward  cherry  and  pear  are  floating 
reluctantly  down.  Wild-fruit  trees,  mys- 
teriously planted,  are  misty  white  above 
the  woodland  thicket — scented  crabapple 
and  twisted  branch  of  plum.  This  is  the 
month  of  blossoms,  as  May  is  the  month 
of  shimmering  leaves  and  June  of  the 
fruitless  flower. 

The  blackbird  swings  at  the  foamy  crest 
of  the  haw,  disturbed  by  a  thousand  de- 
lights, and  notes  too  few  to  tell  them. 
The  crow  hoarsely  mentions  his  rapture 
as  he  flaps  above  the  moving  harrow,  and 
the  new  lambs  look  on  in  a  tremulous, 
wounded  manner  while  the  famished  wood- 
chuck  makes  away  with  the  cloverheads, 

[21] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

they  were  just  about  to  endeavor  to  bite 
off.  Uncertainly  the  wondering  calves 
proceed  about  the  pasture,  not  yet  at  the 
stage  in  life  where  they  will  skip  with 
touching  curiosity  after  every  object  that 
stirs.  At  dusk  and  glistening  morning 
there  are  bird  songs  such  as  only  April 
hears — the  outburst  of  welcome  to  the 
light,  and  the  sleepy  fluting  of  the  robins 
when  the  sky  turns  to  a  soft  prism  in  the 
west.  Fainter,  more  melancholy  even 
than  in  March,  is  the  twilight  lament  of 
the  peepers.  They  are  alien  to  the  aria 
of  April. 

New  England's  forget-me-nots  are  fleet 
turquoise  in  the  grasses;  New  England's 
arbutus  flowers  lie  flushed  pearls  among 
the  ancient  leaves;  but  everywhere  are  the 
violets  of  three  colors — yellow  for  the  pool's 
edge,  white  among  the  bog  lands,  and  blue 
as  pervasive  as  the  sunlight  on  hill  slope, 
road  bank,  and  forest  floor.  And  there 
are  violets  of  an  unfathomable  blue, 
sprinkled  with  white  like  wisps  of  cloud 
against  far  mountains.  Some  grow  close 
to  earth,  taught  by  past  dismay;  others, 
long-stemmed  and  sweet,  will  live  and 
suffer  and  mend  their  ways  next  year. 

[22] 


THE  APRIL   MOMENT 

The  windflower  meets  the  breeze,  a  slim 
princess,  incredibly  fragile,  yet  broken  less 
easily  than  the  strong  tulip,  vaguely 
touched  with  rose  or  white  as  bloodroot. 
Tulips  dwell  not  only  on  the  ground;  they 
have  parted  great,  opaque  petals  at  the 
tops  of  trees,  startling  to  see  in  the  leaf- 
less wood.  Watercress  glitters  in  the  cold 
streams  where  trout,  winter-weary,  are  on 
patrol  for  those  flies  now  magnificent  in 
their  jeweled  dress  of  spring.  The  first  oak 
leaves  are  delicately  crimson  at  the  end 
of  the  bough.  Disregard,  amid  this  pag- 
eantry of  la  vita  nuova,  the  outrageous 
satire  of  brown  skeleton  "fingers"  that 
point  stiffly  up  through  the  shining  blades 
of  grass.  If  they  seem  to  be  a  chilling 
cynicism  of  Nature,  who  has  not  found  an 
April  dandelion  telling  a  braver  story 
through  winter  snow? 

Cedar  and  balsam  twig  are  golden- 
tipped.  Nothing  is  unchanged.  Immor- 
tal wings  that  beat  through  February 
gales  to  reach  this  land  of  their  tradition 
are  fluttering  now  about  the  building  of 
the  nest.  The  smooth  chimney  swift 
flashes  above  the  barn  and  is  gone.  With 
drooping  wings  he  hangs  poised  against 

[23] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

the  daffodil  sky  in  his  evening  play. 
Peaceably  among  the  lilacs  the  contented 
bluebird  sits,  though  through  bulb,  root, 
and  chrysalis  has  passed  the  irresistible^ 
current  that  will  let  no  sharer  of  the  earth 
be  still — not  stone  nor  seed  nor  man.  Into 
this  forced  march  April  steps  with  glad- 
ness, hailing  the  order,  predestined  to 
change.  Joining  her  unresisting,  take  for 
your  own  the  moment  of  escape  which  the 
singer  in  the  blossoms  freely  claims.  Life's 
fullness  is  measured  by  these  salvaged 
April  moments  when  suddenly  joy  be- 
comes a  simple  and  close-dwelling  thing, 
when  for  a  merciful,  lighted  instant  the 
impersonal  and  endless  beauty  of  the 
world  seems  enough. 


[24] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER     'g     CHAPTER 
V.     THE  CREST  OF  SPRING      ¥       « 

ILICKERING  soft  leaves 
spangled  with  sunlit  rain 
give  May  a  robe  diamond- 
sown,  as  lighted  spray  may 
weave  for  the  sea.  Skim- 
ming wings  catch  sunrise  colors.  The 
grass  blade  is  borne  down  by  the  exquisite 
burden  of  one  translucent  pearl.  This  is 
the  luminous  youth  of  the  year,  and  its 
splendor  lies  deeper  than  the  glitter  of 
dew-and-rain  jewels,  for  it  is  visible  in  the 
forbidding  strongholds  of  hemlock  and 
pine,  where  a  sunless  world  still  shines  with 
May.  In  one  month  only  Nature  lights  v 
her  unquenchable  lamp.  Look  down  upon 
the  orchard  from  a  hill:  the  young  leaves 
are  lanterns  of  sheer  green  silk,  not  the 

[25] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

richly  draped  and  shadowy  foliage  of  full 
summer.  Lustrous  is  the  new  red  of 
poison  ivy  and  woodbine,  of  swamp 
maple  and  slowly  budding  oak.  Where 
in  July  the  hard  light  will  play  as  upon 
metal,  lake  and  stream  are  faintly  shim- 
mering gray.  Rain  cannot  dim  the  ra- 
diant freshness,  for  trees  thus  queenly 
clothed  in  blossoms  never  bend  submissive 
to  the  pelting  skies.  Let  that  fragment 
of  creation  which  bears  umbrellas  prostrate 
its  spirit  before  the  "blossom  storm," 
seven  tunes  renewed — the  answer  of  the 
flowered  thorn  is  always  exultant.  Amid 
departing  petals  which  have  played  their 
role  and  gone,  voyaging  on  raindrops,  "the 
May  month  flaps  its  glad  green  leaves  like 
wings." 

Wild  shrubs  upon  the  mountain  slopes 
are  in  thronging  bloom.  Delicately  pink 
and  nectar-laden,  the  prodigal  azalea  calls 
to  the  honeybees,  always  bitterly  indus- 
trious and  severely  intent  upon  duty  amid 
a  general  festival.  It  is  a  great  satisfaction 
sometimes  to  find  a  bee  overtaken  by  in- 
toxication and  night  within  a  water  lily 
or  hollyhock,  his  obtrusive  good  example 
smothered  sweetly.  For  once  he  was  not 

[26] 


THE   CREST  OF  SPRING 

at  the  hive  in  time  to  murmur  of  his 
heavy  day  of  posting  from  garden  to 
meadow!  Dowered  with  a  white  sim- 
plicity beyond  the  pensive  moonflower's, 
the  bracts  of  the  dogwood  seem  afloat 
among  gray  branches — misty,  seen  far  off; 
clear  cut  to  nearer  view;  eloquent  of  spring; 
without  fragrance  as  without  pretense. 
The  mountain  laurel  holds  above  gleam- 
ing leaves  its  marvelously  carven  cups, 
faint  pink  or  white,  amber-flecked.  All 
winter  it  has  kept  the  green,  when  ground 
pine  lay  snowbound  and  spruces  sagged 
with  sleet.  The  victor  may  find  his  wreath 
at  any  time  of  year,  for  our  laurel  has  it* 
ready.  High  toward  the  stars  in  regal 
manner  the  tulip  trees  lift  their  broader 
chalices.  It  is  probably  in  these,  on  the 
topmost  boughs,  that  the  fairies  sleep 
where  mortals  never  climb  up  to  look  in. 
Bilberry,  shadbush,  and  brier  stand  in 
May  marriage  robes  of  white,  quiet  and 
beautiful,  scented  at  dusk  when  the  sun 
warmth  begins  to  leave  the  blossoms. 
The  red  haw  wears  a  little  fine  golden  lace. 
Farther  south  the  rhododendron  is  gor- 
geously displayed — magenta  verging  on 
damson. 

4  [27] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

The  air  is  precious  with  the  plentiful 
sweetness  of  lilac  and  magnolia,  of  the 
memorial  lavender  lilac  that  summons 
homesickness  to  city  parks  on  evenings  of 
May.  The  carmine  glow  of  the  flowering 
quince  is  here,  brought  from  its  tropic 
wilderness.  The  long  flushed  curve  of  the 
almond  spray  bends  meekly  toward  the 
sod.  Opulent  is  every  bush,  though  its 
blossoming  may  be  secret.  In  colors  be- 
loved of  kings,  the  velvet,  minutely  perfect 
iris  commands  the  garden  path.  Beside 
it  in  despair  the  old-time  bleeding-heart 
laments,  and  the  bells  of  the  valley  lily 
hang,  chiming  fragrance.  Impatient  climb 
the  red-stalked  peonies.  The  currant  is 
in  green  but  pleadingly  sweet  blossom. 

High,  thick  grass  and  clover  in  May 
fields  are  only  the  setting  for  the  dazzling 
buttercup,  who  shakes  the  dews  from  her 
closed  petals  before  daybreak  and  folds 
them  prayerfully  at  about  the  time  the 
birds  turn  home.  First  white  daisies, 
supremely  fresh  and  lucid  as  all  May's 
glories  are,  show  a  few  misleading  foam 
flecks  of  the  flood  with  which  they  intend 
to  overwhelm  the  crop  of  hay.  Feathery 
yellow  of  the  wild  mustard  nods  beside 

[28] 


THE   CREST  OF  SPRING 

the  road  as  if  it  were  not  anchored  to  im- 
movable roots.  Already  the  sapphire  star 
grass  is  hiding  in  the  meadows.  Gone 
are  the  blossoms  of  the  wild  strawberry. 
The  canary-colored  five-finger  vine  would 
lace  itself  over  the  world,  given  but  half 
an  opportunity.  So  would  the  bramble 
of  the  fair  white  blossom  and  maroon- 
bordered  leaf. 

Still  are  restless  wings  now  upon  the' 
guarded  nest.  Some  flash  along  the  turned 
furrow,  circle  near  the  eaves,  dip  sharply 
to  the  ripple.  Willow  fronds  are  startled 
by  the  glinting  blue  of  the  kingfisher, 
scarlet  of  the  tanager.  Once  more  the 
chimneys  of  old  houses  know  the  flickering 
swallow.  The  oriole  has  come  to  the 
orchard  again,  the  wren  to  the  grape 
arbor.  Tiny  rabbits,  beholding  for  the 
first  time  what  white  clover  can  be,  twitch 
their  noses  in  content.  Tired  children, 
returning  from  rifled  woodlands  with  too 
many  posies,  drop  them  in  the  path,  like 
flower  girls  intrusted  to  strew  the  way  of 
summer.  It  is  more  comfortable  not  to 
grant  flowers  the  capacity  for  pain,  but  we 
demand,  nevertheless,  that  they  enjoy  giv- 
ing pleasure  to  us,  so  doubtless  they  are 

[29] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

glad  to  be  of  service  even  in  this  thwarted 
fashion.  Yet  May's  store  is  manifold;  her 
waiting  buds  can  replace  the  scattered  ones. 
The  face  of  Nature  wears  in  the  shining 
month  a  beauty  something  less  than 
mature,  but  more  than  the  mischief  and 
troubling  intensity  of  April.  The  wonder 
of  the  hour — the  adieu  of  spring  and  the  re-^ 
joicing  shout  of  coming  summer — dwells 
there,  a  subdued,  impassioned  note.  The 
crest  of  the  year's  youth  merges  like  all 
crests  into  the  wave  beyond,  renewed  for- 
ever like  the  waves.  To  man  alone  has 
been  given  the  difficult  task  of  keeping  on 
without  a  spring.  That  singular  adversity 
is  ours  in  common  with  inanimate  things: 
May  rose  and  lilac  come  back  each  year 
to  the  forsaken  house,  but  to  the  house 
May  brings  no  change.  About  it  a  world 
of  snow  becomes  a  world  of  blossoms,  as 
for  us,  and  the  sun  creates.  But  the  house 
needs  aid  of  human  hands,  man  of  earth's 
quickened  beauty  in  luminous  May. 


[30] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER    ^     CHAPTER 
VI.     HAY  HARVEST  TIME         *$        *$ 

|  Y  the  manifold  hayfields  only, 
were  her  wild-rose  token  ban- 
ished, a  traveler  returning 
from  another  land  to  our 
June,  not  knowing  the  time 
of  year,  might  name  the  month.  In  days 
just  before  hay  harvest  the  glistening 
dance  of  meadow  grasses  is  most  splen- 
did, their  soft  obedience  to  the  winds  is 
readiest.  Deep  rose  plumes  of  sorrel,  the 
wine-colored  red-top,  smoky  heads  of  tim- 
othy, are  forever  aripple,  and,  though 
overstrewn  with  flowers,  they  reveal  when 
bent  beneath  the  step  of  the  southwest 
breeze  a  thousand  lowlier  flowers  near  the 

[31] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

roots.  Here  the  "wild  morning-glory," 
the  tiny  field  convolvulus,  hides  perilously 
in  the  mowing;  white  clover  and  yellow 
five-finger  are  spread ;  the  grassflower  holds 
up  its  single  jewel.  The  swaying  stems 
are  trellises  to  many  a  wandering  vinejv 
there  are  fairy  arbors  where  a  tired  elf 
might  sleep  guarded  from  the  sun  as  well 
as  in  a  jungle.  Here,  too,  the  wild  straw- 
berries are  ripening,  not  breathing  yet  the 
bouquet  of  July;  but  the  white  wild  straw- 
berry, lover  of  the  shades,  has  already 
reached  its  pallid  ripeness.  Far  beneath 
the  moving  surface  of  the  grass  ocean  lies 
a  dim  and  mysterious  world,  lined  with 
track  and  countertrack  of  the  beetle, 
caverns  of  the  mole,  and  the  unremaining 
castle  of  the  ant.  Here  the  sleek  wood- 
chuck  passes  imperceptibly,  the  ingenuous 
cottontail  finds  his  brief  paradise;  small 
moths  fold  their  wings  and  sleep. 

Above  are  light,  motion,  and  the  clearest, 
strongest  colors  of  the  year,  untarnished 
by  hot  suns,  unmixed  with  the  later 
browns.  The  dark-eyed  yellow  daisy,  sun 
worshiper,  rises  amid  the  fresh  brilliance 
of  that  other  starry-petaled  weed  which 
only  sheep  will  eat.  Celestial-blue  chicory 

[32] 


HAY   HARVEST  TIME 

wanders  in  from  the  roadside  and  will  not/-- 
thereafter  be  denied.  Yarrow  with  its 
balsam  fragrance  and  fernlike  leaf,  the 
first  delicate  wild  carrot  asway,  goldfinch, 
yellow  of  the  moth  mullein,  cloverheads  of 
the  Tyrian  dye,  sunny  spray  of  mustard,  lie 
scattered  on  the  crests  of  hayfield  waves. 

In  the  lowgrounds,  on  bowldered  hill- 
sides, far  in  the  woods,  wherever  the  mow- 
ing machine  will  grant  it  a  summer, 
spreads  the  exquisite  wild  rose,  dowered 
like  other  flowers  of  June  —  the  water 
lily,  the  wild-grape  blossom,  the  syringa — 
with  a  perfume  as  wistfully  sweet  as  the 
form  and  hue  of  its  chalice.  That  fra- 
grance, unearthly,  never  fails  to  bring  a 
catch  of  the  breath,  a  start  of  memory, 
when  in  whatever  place  it  is  encountered 
again.  You  seldom  find  a  wild  rose 
ered;  they  cast  their  petals  down  without 
a  struggle,  and  a  throng  of  ardent  pink 
buds  are  waiting  on  the  bush.  So  it  is 
with  the  water  lily — when  the  hour  strikes 
she  draws  her  green  cloak  once  more  about 
her  and  retires  from  the  sun. 

The  meadow  rue  has  shaken  out  veil 
upon  floating  veil  in  the  woodlands.    The 

shaded  knolls  are  sprinkled  lavender  with 
(33) 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

wild  geraniums,  willing  to  be  background 
for  the  May  windflower  or  the  buttercups 
of  June.  Among  the  rocks,  twinkling  red 
and  yellow  in  the  sandy,  sunny  places, 
the  columbine  swings  her  cups  of  honey 
impartially  for  glittering  humming  bird 
and  blunt-nosed,  serious  bee.  Columbines 
are  delicious — could  anyone  regard  them 
sensibly,  and  not  as  something  animate 
and  almost  winged.  The  claret-colored 
milkweed  (a  natural  paradox)  holds  flow- 
ing nectar,  too,  but  there  is  a  paler  milk- 
weed, so  softly  tinted  of  pink,  yellow,  and 
white  as  to  be  no  color  at  all,  whereto  the 
little  yellow  butterflies  drift  to  sip  at  dusk. 
The  blossomed  elder  rests  like  white  fog 
in  the  hollows,  scenting  all  the  country 
ways  and  promising  elder-blossom  wine, 
the  dryad's  draught.  In  moist  and  dark 
retreats — under  hemlocks  and  at  the  doors 
of  caves — the  ghost  lamp  is  lighted.  In 
the  brightest  spot  it  can  find  the  small 
blackberry  lily  paints  against  the  ledge 
its  speckled  orange  star. 

It  is  the  tune  of  perfect  ferns,  uncurled . 
quickly  from  the  brown  balls,  and  making 
our   Northern   woods   tropical   with    the 

sumptuous  brake   and   temperate   imita- 
[34] 


HAY  HARVEST   TIME 

tions  of  the  tree  fern.  They  fill  the  glades 
and  scale  the  cliffs.  They  mingle  enchant- 
ingly  along  creeks  and  at  the  edge  of  the 
pond  with  the  regal  hosts  of  the  blue 
flag — the  lavishly  sown  iris  of  the  meadows. 
They  are  matted  close  in  the  swamps, 
plumy  on  the  hilltops.  From  mosses  on 
old  logs  spring  ferns  almost  as  faery  as  the 
fronds  of  the  moss  itself. 

Into  the  whispering  twilight  of  June  come 
many  creatures  to  play  strange  games  and 
sing  such  songs  as  even  the  many-stringed 
orchestra  of  the  sunlit  hayfield  does  not 
know.  The  swooping  bat  darts  from  thick- 
hung  woodbine  and  noiselessly  crosses 
the  garden,  brushes  the  hollyhocks,  and 
speeds  toward  the  moon.  Moths,  white 
and  pallid  green,  wander  like  spirits 
among  the  peonies.  Sometimes  the  hum- 
ming bird  shakes  the  trumpet  vine  in  the 
dark,  queerly  restless,  though  he  is  Apol- 
lo's acolyte.  The  fireflies  are  lambently 
awing.  The  cricket's  pleading,  interrupted 
song  is  half  silenced  by  the  steady,  hot 
throb  of  the  locust's.  The  tree  toad's 
eerie  note  comes  faint  and  sweet,  but  from 
what  cranny  of  the  bark  he  only  knows.  i 
The  mother  bird,  guardian  even  in  sleep, 

135] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

<  speaks  drowsily  to  her  children.  From 
the  brooding  timber  the  owl  sends  his  call 
of  despair  across  acres  of  friendly  fields 
placid  in  the  dew.  June  nights  are  wake- 
ful. Then  enchantment  deepens,  for  there 
comes  no  pause  in  darkness  for  the  joy 
of  earth. 


[36] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER  *$  CHAPTER 
VII.  °$  THE  MONTH  OF  YELLOW 
FLOWERS  ¥  Iff  ¥  *¥ 

t,OM  valley  after  valley  dies 
away  the  drowsy  croon  of 
the  mowing  machine,  leaving 
to  the  grasshoppers  the  fra- 
grant drying  hay.  Now 
comes  July  in  many  hues  of  yellow,  spread- 
ing her  gold  beside  dark,  hidden  beaver 
backwaters  and  along  the  sun-warmed 
stubble,  whose  various,  singing  life  is 
loudest  through  these  shimmering  after- 
noons. Tawny  beauties  are  abroad  in 
woodways  and  sea  marshes.  Where  the 
hot  air  shines  and  quivers  over  shallow 
pools  yellow  water  lilies  float  sleepily  be- 
137] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

neath  curved  canopies,  while  the  lucent 
pallors  of  the  white  water  lily  one  by  one 
are  dimmed.  Moving  serenely  toward  its 
climax,  the  season  drinks  the  sun  and  takes 
the  color  of  its  slanting  light. 

The  flame  lily  lifts  a  burnt-orange  cup* 
straight  toward  the  sky.  The  yellow 
meadow  lily  bends  down  over  the  damp 
mold  it  seeks.  But  both  love  deep  woods, 
and,  blazing  suddenly  above  a  fern  bed, 
the  rich  flowers  startle,  like  a  butterfly 
of  the  Andes  adrift  in  Canadian  forests. 
They  are  princesses  of  the  tropics,  in- 
congruously banished  to  Northern  swamps, 
but  scornfully  at  ease.  The  false  Sol- 
omon's-seal  in  proud  assemblies  wears 
with  an  oddly  holiday  air  its  freckled 
coral  beads,  always  a  lure  to  the  errant 
cow;  and  jack-in-the-pulpit,  having  been 
invested  with  some  churchly  rank  which 
demands  the  red  robe,  is  ready  to  cast 
off  his  cassock  of  lustrous  striped  green 
for  one  of  scarlet.  The  pendent-flowered 
jewelweed,  plant  with  temperament  and 
therefore  called,  too,  touch-me-not,  droops 
its  dew-lined  leaves  along  the  traveled 
lanes,  for  it  is  making  ready  small  surprise 
packages  of  seed  that  snap  ferociously  open 

[38] 


THE  MONTH  OF  YELLOW  FLOWERS 

at  a  touch;  and  thus  intriguing  every 
passer-by  into  sowing  its  crop,  it  earns 
the  name  unfairly  borne  by  the  innocent 
yellow  toadflax — snapdragon,  which  snaps 
only  at  bumblebees. 

Gayly  in  possession  of  the  fields,  black- 
eyed  Susan,  known  to  the  fanner  as  "that 
confounded  yellow  bull's-eye,"  is  holding 
her  own,  prepared  to  resist  to  the  utmost 
the  onslaught  of  the  goldenrod,  which 
presumes  to  unfurl  in  summer  the  banners 
of  fall.  The  clear  yellow  evening  prim- 
rose, scion  of  one  of  our  very  best  old 
English  families,  associates  democratically 
with  a  peasant  mullein  stalk,  canary- 
flecked,  since  they  both  fancy  sun  and 
sand.  Magnificent  sometimes  upon  the 
sand  banks  rises  a  clump  of  that  copper- 
in-the-sunshine  flower,  the  butterfly  weed, 
soon  to  become  as  fugitive  as  our  fair,  lost 
trailing  arbutus,  the  cardinal,  and  the 
fringed  gentian,  if  its  lovers  do  not  woo 
it  less  selfishly.  All  beauty  refuses  cap- 
tivity. In  upland  meadows  the  orange 
hawkweed  is  afoot,  waving  its  delirious- 
colored  "paint  brush"  wantonly  amid  the 
pasture  grass  in  the  light  hours,  but  folding 
it  at  sunset,  no  sipper  of  the  dews.  Brook 

5  [39] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

sunflowers  have  come  to  the  edge  of  the 
stream,  but  not  to  look  into  the  waters; 
their  sunward-gazing  petals  are  delicately 
scented,  surpassing  their  sisters  of  the 
fenced  garden.  The  half-tamed  tiger  lily, 
haunter  of  deserted  dooryards  and  faithful 
even  to  abandoned  mountain  farms  long 
since  given  over  to  the  wildcat  and  the 
owl,  wanderer  by  dusty  roadsides,  offers 
each  morning  new  buds,  and  by  twilight 
they  have  bloomed  and  withered.  Like 
the  May  rose,  this  is  an  elegiac  flower, 
clinging  to  lost  gardens  when  all  the  rest 
have  vanished,  though  patches  of  tansy, 
herb  of  witchlore,  will  show  pungent 
golden  buttons  for  long  years  untended, 
let  the  forgotten  gardener  but  plant  it 
once.  How  many  a  little  cabin,  built  in 
eagerness  and  hope,  is  remembered  at  last 
only  by  the  tiger  lily,  May  rose,  and  chim- 
ney swift!  Yellow  sweet  clover,  catching 
a  roothold  anywhere,  declaring  the  gravel 
bed  a  garden,  makes  it  happiness  to  breathe 
the  entranced  air.  The  yellow  butterflies, 
like  leaves  of  autumn,  tremble  and  flurry- 
where  the  sun-steeped  field  meets  the 
sweet  dark  wood.  Among  the  rocks  gleam 
ebony  seeds  of  the  blackberry  lily,  whose 

[40] 


THE  MONTH  OF  YELLOW  FLOWERS 

star  of  orange  and  umber  is  about  to 
set. 

Who  knows,  besides  the  birds,  that  em- 
broidered on  the  moss  new  scarlet  par- 
tridge berries  are  ripe,  hung  from  the 
vagrant  vine  of  pale-veined  leaf  that  does 
not  fear  the  snow?  Only  a  month  ago  in 
this  fairy  greenery  lay  the  furry  white 
partridge  blossom,  almost  invisible,  but 
with  a  fragrance  like  that  of  just-opened 
water  lilies,  and  now  the  green  fruit  colors 
to  the  Christmas  hue.  There  are  no 
flowers  like  these.  The  wood  fairies  wear 
them  with  their  gowns  of  spangled  cobweb 
trimmed  with  moonlight. 

Bough  apples,  with  a  sweetness  like  that 
of  flowers  distilled  by  the  intense  sun, 
show  the  first  brown  seeds.  From  the 
high-piled  loads  of  hay  journeying  slowly 
to  the  mow  fall  the  dried  buttercups  and 
daisies  that  danced  in  the  mowing  grass. 
Ceaseless  are  locusts;  heavy  is  the  air  above 
the  garden,  where  phlox  and  strawberry 
shrub  tinge  it  Persian-sweet.  Clustered 
blueberries  are  drooped  upon  the  moun- 
tains, and  in  the  swamps,  sometimes  over 
quicksands,  shows  the  darkling  sheen  of 
the  high-bush  huckleberry.  The  odor  of 

[41] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

the  balsam  fir  is  drawn  out  and  spread  far 
by  the  heat.  Now  the  pursued  brambles 
become  the  blackberry  patch.  The  waste 
lands  shine  yellow  with  the  blooms  of  the 
marching  hardback.  It  is  the  triumph  of 
the  sun,  and  his  priest,  the  white  day  lily 
of  the  cloistral  leaf,  worships  in  fragrance. 


[42] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER     «$     CHAPTER 
VIII.     THE   MOOD   OF   AUGUST         <$ 

]  HE  wild  cherries  are  no  longer 
garnet;  they  have  darkened 
to  their  harvest  and  hang  in 
somber  ripeness  from  the 
twig.  Drowsy  lie  the  grain 
fields  and  slowly  purpling  vineyards.  The 
robin  in  the  apple  orchard  is  hardly  to  be 
seen  among  the  red-fruited  boughs  from 
which  the  first  Astrakhans  are  dropping. 
Days  of  uncertain  suns  and  exultant  grow- 
ing are  over.  A  languorous  pause  has  come 
to  the  year.  Even  the  crows,  flapping  away 
across  the  windy  blue,  caw  in  a  sleepy 
fashion,  not  yet  hoarse  with  anxiety  be- 
cause the  huskers  are  hurrying  the  corn 

[43] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

to  cover  with  that  penurious  vigilance 
which  a  crow  finds  so  objectionable.  The 
rabbits,  scampering  and  wary  in  the  new 
clover  time,  sit  out  in  the  hot  sun  a  good 
deal  now,  like  convalescent  patients;  they 
will  keep  this  up  until  the  faint  noons  of 
November,  storing  the  warmth  that  lets 
them  sleep,  come  winter,  through  many  a 
hunting  party  overhead.  The  woodpecker 
knocks  with  less  ferocity.  Stately  on  his 
favorite  dead  branch  at  the  lake's  edge  the 
blue-armored  kingfisher  sits  to  watch  the 
ripple.  Only  the  grasshopper  persists  with 
tragical  intensity  in  his  futile  rehearsal  for 
the  role  of  humming  bird.  A  satirical 
Italian  compares  man  to  the  grasshopper, 
but  no  man  is  capable  of  such  devotion 
to  baffled  aspirations.  Practice  in  grace 
makes  him  more  and  more  imperfect. 
Young  wood  duck,  with  portentous  dignity, 
follow  their  mother  down  the  topaz  creek 
in  single  file,  an  attentive  field  class,  ob- 
serving the  demented  lucky  bugs,  the  red- 
lined  lily  pads  of  the  coves,  the  turtles  sound 
asleep  on  the  warm  stones.  For  the  wood's 
feathered  children  this  is  no  month  of  play 
and  slumber;  it  will  soon  be  autumn,  and 
they  must  attempt  the  long  flight,  y 

[44] 


THE   MOOD   OF   AUGUST 

The  aspect  of  the  buckwheat  fields  is 
August's  signet.  From  their  goldenrod 
borders  reaches  a  world  of  happy  white- 
ness, against  sky  the  color  of  the  pickerel- 
weed  flower,  waving  softly,  shadowed  only 
by  the  plumy  clouds.  The  corn  is  out  in 
topgallant,  and  if  you  look  from  a  moun- 
tain path  into  the  planted  valley,  the  e*cru 
tassels  have  hidden  the  lustrous  ribbon 
leaves.  Cornfields  are  never  silent.  Al- 
ways there  is  a  low  swish,  like  that  of 
little  summer  waves  on  a  lake  shore. 

Lavender  and  purple  thistles,  brimmed 
with  nectar,  are  besought  by  imperious 
bees  and  the  great  blue-black  butterfly, 
but  already  their  pale-lit  ships  drift,  unre- 
turning,  under  sealed  orders,  to  some  far 
harbor  in  the  port  of  spring.  More  silvery 
still,  the  milkweed  is  adrift.  Fleets  of 
white  butterflies  rise  and  fall  with  the  sun- 
set breeze,  and  slow,  twilight  moths  come 
from  under  the  brakes  at  the  hour  of  dew. 
White-flowered,  the  clematis  and  wild  cu- 
cumber, the  creamy  honeysuckle  of  the 
amorous  fragrance,  cover  fence  rail  and 
stone  wall,  give  petals  to  the  barren  under- 
brush, twine  fearlessly  around  barbed  wire, 
and  festoon  deserted  barns.  Healing  herbs 

[45] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

of  long  ago  that  once  were  hung  every  fall 
from  attic  rafters — the  "wild  isep,"  or 
mountain  mint,  and  the  gray-blooming 
boneset — stand  profuse  but  unregarded  in 
the  lowgrounds.  We  buy  our  magic  po- 
tions now.  Once  they  were  brewed  above 
the  back  log,  as  occasion  came.  In  ferny 
shadows  glimmers  the  ivory  Indian  pipe. 
The  wild  carrot,  with  delicate  insistence, 
takes  the  field. 

Ironweed  of  royal  purple,  maroon-shot, 
mingles  in  illogical  harmony  with  the  blue 
*A*U— -  vervain  and  magenta  trumpet-weeds.  The 
note  makers  name  over  for  us  a  score  of 
flowers  that  Shakespeare  meant  by  "long 
purples";  but  surely  he  foresaw  our 
Northern  swamps  in  August,  on  fire  with 
those  exuberant,  torchlike  weeds  that  rise 
tall  above  the  bogs  and  earn,  by  their 
arresting  splendor  against  a  crimson  skyn 
the  need  of  immortality  in  song.  They 
blo'om  before  the  katydids  begin  and  sur- 
vive the  first  frost.  A  few  violets — a  seed 
crop,  not  intended  for  men's  gaze,  and 
hidden  cautiously  beneath  the  leaves,  are 
timidly  aflower.  They  will  not  go  unwed, 
but  would  crave  to  die  obscure. 

The  last  of  the  new-tasting  bough  apples 

[46] 


THE   MOOD  OF  AUGUST 

lie  in  the  orchard  grass.  The  later  apple 
trees,  like  the  sunning  rabbit  and  the 
thought-worn  crow,  wait  for  the  harvest 
moon.  Already  the  unresting  twigs  are 
preparing  their  winter  mail  of  cork  and 
gum,  which  will  not  be  unfastened  by  the 
fiercest  assaults  of  the  sleet.  Short- 
stemmed  flowers  have  arisen  to  clothe  the 
sharp  wheat  stubble.  Along  the  mountain 
road  grow  vagabond  peach  trees,  to  whose 
fruit  cling  eager  blue  wasps,  whose  aro- 
matic gum  traps  many  a  climbing  robber. 
Other  wanderers  from  the  tended  orchard 
— cruelly  sour  plums  and  rouge-cheeked 
pears — growing  among  the  cornel  bushes, 
drop  down  for  the  field  mouse  and  wood- 
chuck  their  harvest  of  the  wilderness. 
Some  of  them,  companioned  by  the  faithful 
phlox  and  sunflower,  once  grew  in  door- 
yards  now  desolate.  The  surpassing  rose 
mallow  like  sunrise  lights  the  marshes. 

It  is  not  a  month  of  growth.  Fruit  and 
grain  are  only  expanding — weeks  ago  the 
marvel  of  formation  was  complete.  It  is 
the  tune  of  warm,  untroubled  slumber  that 
ends  with  the  reveille  of  frost. 


147] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER     1?     CHAPTER 
IX.     SUMMER  PAUSES  *8?  1> 

[HERE  the  slow  creek  is  put- 
ting out  to  sea,  freighted 
with  seed  and  wan  leaf, 
cardinal-flowers  watch  the 
waters  reddened  by  their 
image.  Old  gold  and  ocher,  the  ferns  be- 
neath move  listlessly  up  and  down  with 
the  ripple.  As  spring  walks  first  along 
the  stream,  autumn,  too,  comes  early  to 
the  waterside,  to  kindle  swamp  maples 
and  give  the  alder  colors  of  onyx.  The 
lustrous  indigo  of  the  silky  cornel  hangs 
there  in  profusion.  Scented  white  balls 
of  the  river  bush  have  lost  their  golden 
haloes,  and  even  the  red-grounded  purple 


SUMMER  PAUSES 

of  the  ironweed  is  turning  umber.  The 
fruited  sweetbrier  shows  rust.  Fall's  an- 
cient tapestry,  the  browns  of  decay  worked 
over  with  carmine,  olive,  maroon,  and 
buff,  is  being  hung,  but  where  the  blue 
lobelia  is  clustered  in  the  lowground  sum- 
mer pauses.  A  parting  sun  catches  the 
clear  yellow  of  curtsying,  transfigured 
birch  leaves,  and  looks  back,  waiting,  to 
give  September's  landscape  a  hesitant  fare-  v 
well.  It  seems  early  to  go.  Pickerel- 
weed  is  azure  still.  Among  the  green  bogs 
the  fragrant  lady's-tresses  wear  the  white 
timidity  of  April,  and  the  three  petals  of 
the  enameled  arrowhead  flower  are  dusty 
with  gold.  But  seeds  wrapped  up  in 
brown  are  scattering.  Remembrance 
yields  to  prophecy. 

The  harvesters  of  grain  and  grass  have 
gone,  and  the  tinted  stubble  is  full  of 
crickets  and  monotonous  cicadas.  Now 
the  crumbling  furrow  is  folded  back  be- 
hind the  plow  and  corn  knives  are  swinging 
close  to  the  solemn  pumpkins,  for  in  corn- 
field, vineyard,  and  orchard  and  in  the 
squirrel's  domain  the  last  harvests  of  all 
are  hastening  to  ripeness  as  the  sunset 
chill  gives  warning  of  a  disaster  foretold 

[49] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

since  August  by  the  katydid.  The  honey- 
colored  pippins,  cracked  and  mellow  in  the 
brooding  heat,  encounter  the  windfalls  of 
October's  trees — deepening  red,  soft  yel- 
low, and  polished  green.  Great,  shelter- 
ing leaves  are  dropping  from  the  burdened 
vine.  Every  breath  tells  of  fruits,  drying 
herbs,  and  the  late  flowers  that  in  de- 
serted gardens  are  most  pungent  in  Sep- 
tember— marigolds,  tansy,  and  the  cin- 
namon pink.  Pennyroyal  and  mint  are 
betrayed.  Thorn  apples,  not  near  ripened, 
are  knocked  from  the  twig  by  south-bound 
birds. 

Still,  among  wine-colored  and  vermilion 
foliage,  the  acorn  is  green,  though  flushed 
wintergreen  berry  and  red-gemmed  par- 
tridge vine  proclaim  autumn  along  the 
forest  floor.  The  auburn  splendors  are 
upon  the  sumac  and  the  burning-bush  of 
old-fashioned  dooryards,  where,  too,  the 
smoke  tree  holds  its  haze  of  seeds.  Some- 
times a  gentian  stands  erect  among  dead 
grasses — a  slim  senora  with  a  fringed  man- 
tilla swirled  close  about  her  shoulders  in 
the  chilly  dusk.  The  closed  gentian  keeps 
its  darkly  impenetrable  blue  beside  the 
pink- tipped  companion  stalks  of  the 

[50] 


SUMMER  PAUSES 

snake's-head.  Fair  are  the  sheathed  ber- 
ries of  the  prickly  ash — but  daggers  to  the 
taste.  Often  they  grow  among  wild  cher- 
ries, which,  juiceless  now,  are  sweet  as 
dried  fruits  from  Persia.  And  there  are 
/the  black  nannyberries  with  their  water- 
melon flavor,  and  the  first  spicy  wild 
grapes. 

Immortelles  are  bleached  paper  white 
on  sandy  hills.  The  nightshade  holds 
berries  of  three  colors,  passing  from  bril- 
liant green  to  clouded  amber  and  deep 
crimson  lake,  and  still  upon  it  hangs  the 
mysterious  blue  blossom,  shunned.  Dog- 
wood boughs  are  gorgeous  as  a  sunset, 
and  the  thick  scarlet  clusters  droop  from 
the  mountain  ash.  The  last  humming 
birds  haunt  tanned  honeysuckles.  Lan- 
guid, but  clinging  yet  to  the  sun  world, 
the  yellow  lily  dies  on  weedy  streams.  If 
the  all-conquering  goldenrod  hangs  the 
way  for  summer's  passing  with  the  color 
of  regret,  it  has  made  every  meadow  El 
Dorado  with  its  plumes,  sprays,  clumps, 
and  spears.  Spray  upon  delicate  spray, 
the  fairy  lavender  aster  has  taken  posses- 
sion of  the  roadsides  and  fields,  and  before 
it,  far  into  the  shade,  goes  the  white  wood 

[51] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

aster,  mingling  with  the  flamboyant  leaves 
of  dwarf  oaks  and  the  glistening  red  seeds 
of  the  wild  turnip.  To  make  September's 
pageant  the  scented,  pale  petals  of  spring, 
the  drowsy  contentedness  of  summer's 
fulfillment  and  the  Tyrian  dyes  of  fall  are 
joined. 

The  pallid  clematis,  in  flower  along  rail 
fences,  still  hides  the  blacksnake,  chip- 
munk, and  red  squirrel — sometimes  even 
the  unsylphlike  woodchuck  —  but  the 
marshes  and  the  branches  of  the  lakeside 
pines  have  felt  for  days  past  the  brief 
touch  of  many  a  strange  bird's  feet  as  the 
vanguard  migrants  seek  regions  of  longer 
days.  Finely  dressed  visitors  have  come 
to  the  blue-berried  juniper  and  the  mon- 
strous pokeweed  of  the  terra-cotta  stem. 
The  heron  breaks  his  profound  meditation 
to  engulf  a  meadow  frog,  for  he  will  not 
leave  until  the  wild  geese  "with  mingled 
sound  of  horn  and  bells"  press  south  above 
the  watercourses.  Starling  and  blue  jay. 
stay  awhile  to  oblige  with  their  clatter  to 
the  dawn.  The  fur  has  thickened  on  the 
woods  creatures. 

The  blind  might  hear  September  in  the 
uproarious  arguments  of  the  crow,  the 

152] 


SUMMER  PAUSES 

despondent  cries  of  katydid,  tree  toad,  and 
hoot  owl.  In  the  air  is  reluctance,  pause. 
Flaming  festoons  of  woodbine  and  poison 
ivy  begarland  the  stone  wall.  Summer 
cannot  wait.  Elegiac  purples  of  the  aster 
beckon,  and  the  butterfly  sleeps  long  upon 
the  thistle,  but  she  would  not  go  now,  in 
the  month  of  the  first  bittersweet  and  the 
last  sweet  pea. 


163] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER  ^  CHAPTER 
X.  °£  WHEN  THE  OAKS  WEAR 
DAMSON  <$  <$  <$  ¥ 

I  HE  wild  ducks  are  streaming 
south  upon  their  journey  of 
uncounted  days.  Resting  a 
little  after  sunset  upon  the 
cedar  -  bordered  pond,  they 
are  startled  into  flight  again  by  some  hound 
hunting  in  the  night,  and  with  beating 
wing  and  eerie  cry  go  on.  The  later  flying 
geese  rise  clamorous  from  among  the  cat- 
tails, and  in  silent  haste  the  blue  heron 
and  the  pair  of  sad  old  cranes  that  had 
roosted  in  a  dead  elm  alongshore  take  the 
chill,  invisible  trail.  When  day  comes  in 

[54] 


WHEN  THE  OAKS  WEAR  DAMSON 

spreading  fire  the  crows  will  humorously 
watch  these  wander-birds  from  the  forest 
edges.  They  feel  no  southward  impulse. 
Circling  the  clearing,  they  comment  in 
uproar  upon  the  most  advisable  oak  for 
their  afternoon  symposium,  expand  their 
polished  feathers,  and,  seated  in  a  derisive 
row,  caw  a  farewell  to  the  wader's  long, 
departing  legs.  Now  the  mountaineer's 
girl,  remembering  Old  World  peasant  tales 
that  never  have  been  told  her,  hurries  in- 
doors at  nightfall  from  the  hallooing  specter 
of  the  Wild  Huntsman  in  the  clouds,  who 
is  but  the  anxious  leader  of  the  flying 
wedge. 

Buckwheat  stubble  in  October  is  such' 
a  crimson  as  no  Fiesolan  rose  garden  ever 
unfurled.  Gray  hill  slopes  of  the  North 
are  festal  with  its  color,  insistent  even 
through  rains,  glowing  from  rose  madder 
to  maroon.  Lower  stretches  out  the  pale 
yellow  of  oats  stubble,  which  breaks  into 
flashing  splinters  under  the  noon  sun. 
The  wheat  fields  show  ocher,  and  darker — 
burnt  sienna  at  the  roots — lie  the  reaped 
fields  of  barley.  Small  rash  flowers,  fancy- 
ing that  the  ground  between  the  grain 
stalks  has  been  cultivated  especially  for 

[55] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

them,  now  that  they  see  the  sun  freely 
again,  put  on  the  petals  of  spring  amid 
this  fair  desolation.  Strawberry  blossoms, 
visibly  fey,"  appear;  long-stemmed  and 
scanty  -  flowered  fall  dandelions;  an  ill- 
timed  display  of  April's  buttercups.  The 
blackberry  vines  go  richly  dyed — superb 
red- velvet  settings  for  the  jewels  of  frost. 
Down  in  the  valley,  through  the  wood- 
smoke  haze,  move  the  slow  apple  wagons 
through  the  lanes.  This  is  appleland. 
Northern  Spy  and  Lemon  Pippin  are  ripe 
to  cracking;  Baldwins  will  be  mellow  by 
Twelfth-night,  the  russet  at  Easter.  Gor- 
geous and  ephemeral  hangs  the  Maiden's 
Blush.  The  strawberry  apples  are  like 
embers  on  the  little  trees,  rubies  of  the 
orchard.  Lady  Sweets  and  Dominies  are 
respectfully  being  urged  into  the  cellar, 
and  for  those  who  will  pay  to  learn  the 
falseness  of  this  world's  shows  the  freight 
cars  are  receiving  Ben  Davises.  Sheep- 
noses,  left  often  on  the  boughs,  will  hold', 
cold  nectar  after  the  black  frosts  have 
killed  the  last  marigold.  They  lie,  dull 
red,  by  the  orchard  fence  in  the  early 
snow,  their  blunt  expression  revealing  no 
secrets.  You  have  to  know  about  them. 

[56] 


WHEN    THE    OAKS    WEAR    DAMSON 

Nothing    is    more    inscrutable    than    a 
sheep-nose. 

Fast  above  the  indigo  crests  stir  the 
light  clouds,  harried  by  the  west  wind 
whereon  the  hawk  floats  across  the  valley. 
In  the  afternoon  October's  lover  takes  the  ; 
hill  path,  mica-gemmed,  that  leads  be- 
tween birches  of  the  translucent  yellow 
leaf  and  maples  still  green  but  wearing 
scarlet  woodbine  like  a  gypsy's  sash.  For 
here  the  sunset  lingers  till  the  stars,  though 
from  the  valley's  goblet  evening  has  sipped 
the  waning  sunlight  like  a  clear  amber 
wine.  But  take  at  morning  the  path 
through  brown  lowgrounds,  or  close  along 
the  wood  where  frost  sleeps  late,  for  here 
that  flower  of  desire,  the  fringed  gentian, , 
grows.  Its  blue  is  less  mysterious  and 
deep  than  the  closed  gentian's,  and  yet 
how  many  name  it  the  cup  of  autumn  . 
delight! 

In  the  woods  where  leafless  boughs  give 
them  blue  sky  at  last  are  revealed  in 
quaint  perfection  the  ferneries  of  the  moss : 
palm  trees  towering  higher  than  a  snail's 
house,  gallant  green  plumes  with  corne- 
lians at  the  tip,  vast  tropical  forests  spread- 
ing for  long  inches,  gray  trailing  rivers 

[57] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

and  orange  cliffs  of  lichen,  leagues  of 
delicate  jungle  lost  under  a  fallen  leaf. 
A  beetle  clad  in  shining  mail  presses 
through  the  wilderness.  A  cobalt  dragon- 
fly lights  on  a  shaken  palm.  Pursuing  a 
rolling  hickory  nut,  the  chipmunk  brings 
a  hurricane — but  these  are  elastic  trees. 

That  same  mischief  maker,  incurably 
curious,  chases  every  stranger,  shooting 
along  the  stone  wall  and  pausing  to  peer 
out  from  the  crevices  with  unregenerate 
eyes.  The  handsome  but  vain  woodpecker 
pounds  at  the  grub-dowered  tree  he  has 
chosen  to  persecute.  Enormously  ingen- 
uous, the  wayside  cow  lumbers  reproach- 
fully out  of  the  path,  knocking  the  grains 
of  excellent  make-believe  coffee  from  the 
withered  dock.  The  drumming  of  a  par- 
tridge in  his  solitary  transport  sounds 
where  reddened  dogwood  glorifies  a  clump 
of  firs.  Sometimes  the  kittle  pheasant, 
hardly  at  home  in  our  woods,  ducks  her 
head  and  vanishes  in  the  briers. 

Now  the  harvest  moon,  yellower  than 
the  hunter's  moon  of  ending  autumn  or 
the  strawberry  moon  that  looks  upon 
June's  roses,  rises  for  husking  time.  It 
is  the  last  harvest;  when  the  corn  is  in, 

[58] 


WHEN  THE  OAKS  WEAR  DAMSON 

winter  comes.  Piled,  tumbling  ears,  their 
grain  set  in  many  a  curious  pattern,  go 
by  to  the  sorting  floor  and  crib,  with 
pumpkins,  the  satraps  of  New  England, 
perched  in  rickety  fashion  on  the  gleam- 
ing load.  The  mountain  ash  hangs  flam- 
boyant clusters  along  the  road  from  the 
field.  Obedient  to  the  frost,  the  acorns 
are  dropping,  and  the  first  chestnuts  lie, 
polished  mahogany,  in  the  whitened  grass 
at  sunrise.  The  shagbark  has  scattered 
its  largess,  the  butternut  its  dainties  in 
their  staining  coats.  Against  the  slopes 
the  tinted  fern  patches  show  bronze,  rus- 
set, and  pansy  brown.  Speaking  October 
and  our  own  purple  East,  the  tall  asters, 
darkening  from  lavender  to  the  ultimate 
shadowy  violet,  join  the  goldenrod.  Su- 
macs are  thronging,  with  their  proudly 
blazoned  crests;  the  haw  is  hung  with 
Chinese  scarlet  lanterns;  sweetbrier,  stem 
and  leaf,  is  scented  of  menthol  and  spices 
of  the  Orient.  The  oaks  stand  regal  in 
umber  and  damson.  Who  that  has  known 
October  could  ever  forget?  How  quiet  the 
nights  are  after  frost! 


[59] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER     •»     CHAPTER 
XI.      NOVEMBER   TRAITS          "$          <$ 

|Y  the  time  November  comes 
the  year  is  used  to  the 
caprices  of  the  sun  and  no 
longer  frantically  brings  out 
flowers  for  his  gaze  or  hides 
them  in  hurt  surprise  from  his  indifference. 
Now  the  year  is  resigned,  untroubled  of 
hope,  far  off  from  impatient  April  with 
her  craving  and  effort.  Experienced 
month,  November  waits  ready  to  face  the 
snows.  She  wraps  up  the  buds  too 
warmly  for  sleet  to  pierce  their  overcoats, 
comforts  the  roots  in  the  woods  with  mats 
of  wrecked  leaves,  spreads  a  little  jewelry 
of  frost  as  a  warning  before  the  black 
frosts  come,  and  for  all  else  lives  in  the 
moment.  November  has  been  through 
this  before.  But  sometimes,  in  a  reverie, 

[60] 


NOVEMBER  TRAITS 

she  delights  the  blue  jays  and  persistent 
wild  asters  by  a  day  of  Indian  summer. 

There  has  been  a  great  deal  of  ill  feeling 
about  Indian  summer,  and  the  kinder  way 
is  not  to  persecute  those  who  have  since 
youth  believed  and  will  maintain  forever 
that  it  comes  in  October.  Victims  of  this 
perverted  fancy,  they  will  go  through  life 
calling  the  first  hot  spell  after  Labor  Day 
Indian  summer.  Every  fall  one  explains 
to  them  that  this  brief  season  of  perfection 
may  come  as  late  as  Thanksgiving,  but 
the  very  next  year  they  will  be  heard  to 
murmur,  under  frostless  skies,  "Well,  we 
are  having  our  Indian  summer."  Let 
them  go  their  indoors  way,  or  follow  the 
deserting  robins  down  to  Paraguay!  In- 
dian summer  could  just  as  well  come  when 
the  oaks  have  turned  forlorn  if  it  wanted 
to.  In  truth,  it  comes  and  goes,  by  no 
means  exhausted  in  a  solitary  burst  of 
flaring  sumacs,  fringed  gentians  lighted  by 
frost  along  the  rims,  damson-colored  alder 
leaves  and  old  yellow  pumpkins,  perilously 
exposed  among  forgotten  furrows,  now  that 
the  corn  is  being  drawn  in.  It  goes,  and 
comes  again,  which  is  its  charm — the  one 
time  of  year  that  cannot  be  calendared. 

[61] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

There  is  in  all  the  world  a  small,  choice 
coterie  of  people  who  like  November  and 
March  best  of  the  months,  and  it  must  be 
admitted  that  these  are  often  a  bit  arro- 
gant about  their  refined  perceptions.  They 
manage  to  look  down  upon  the  many  of 
us  who  prefer  the  daisy  fields  to  the  time 
"when  hills  take  on  the  noble  lines  of 
death."  But  whims  of  the  worshiper 
steal  no  splendor  from  the  god.  June  has 
nothing  to  place  beside  a  moonlit  Novem- 
ber night,  whose  shadow  dance  of  multi- 
form boughs  is  never  seen  through  leaves, 
while  shadows  on  the  snow  are  hard  of 
outline,  unlike  the  illusive  phantoms  run- 
ning over  autumn's  brown  grass.  June 
has  no  flowers  so  quaint,  pathetic,  and 
austere  as  the  trembling  weeds  of  No- 
vember. What  does  the  goldenrod,  white 
with  age,  care  for  frost?  All  winter  it  will 
shake  out  seeds  unthriftily  upon  the  snow, 
standing  with  a  calm  brotherhood  who 
have  gone  beyond  dependence  on  the  day. 
June's  forests  do  not  take  a  thousand 
colors  under  a  low  sun.  June's  gray  dews 
have  no  magnificence  of  frost.  June's 
incorrigible  sparrows  are  not  the  brave, 
flitting  "snowbirds"  whose  sins  we  for- 

[62] 


NOVEMBER  TRAITS 

give,  once  we  hear  them  chirping  in  a 
blizzard.  June  is  a  lyric,  November  a 
hymn. 

The  squirrels  have  put  away  enough  nuts 
to  last  through  the  holidays,  and  after 
that  they  come  out  and  get  something  else 
— no  one  ever  knows  what.  They  have 
gone  off  with  most  of  the  acorns,  leaving 
the  fairies  their  usual  autumn  supply  of 
cupless  saucers.  No  birds  worth  fighting 
with  are  left,  for  the  crows  will  not  notice 
them,  so  they  go  for  the  chipmunks. 
Sometimes  at  the  wood's  edge  a  bird  that 
came  only  with  the  blossoms  and  that 
should  long  since  have  gone  sits  lost,  half 
grotesque,  on  a  stark  twig — spent  and 
beautiful  singer,  belated  by  perversity  or 
by  untimely  f  aintness  of  wing !  The  musk- 
rat's  winter  house  is  ready,  but  no  happy 
quiet  such  as  his  good  citizenship  deserves 
is  in  store  for  him,  because  soon  the  trap- 
pers will  begin  their  patrol  of  the  forest, 
and  his  skin,  called  wild  Patagonian  ox, 
the  exquisite  new  fur,  will  bring  a  good 
price.  Emotional  wild  geese  still  pass 
overhead  in  the  dawns  and  sunsets — the 
crows  can  scarcely  conceal  their  amuse- 
ment: "What  nonsense,  to  be  always 

[63J 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

coming  or  going!"  The  crow  does  not  re- 
main in  the  pale  North  simply  out  of  devo- 
tion to  us.  He  is  above  mortal  vicissitudes ; 
behind  his  demoniac  eye  dwells  a  critique 
of  humanity  which  he  would  not  be 
bothered  to  utter  if  he  could.  The  soul" 
of  the  satirist  once  abode  in  a  crow. 

Forsaken  nests  and  rattling  reeds  along 
the  stream,  pools  in  the  hollows  edged 
with  thin  ice,  ragged  leaves  clutched  at  by 
the  winds,  desperate  buds  of  hepatica  and 
cowslip  where  a  sloping  bank  catches 
warmth  at  noon,  fences  stripped  of  vines 
and  ghostly  with  dead  clematis,  a  few 
frozen  apples  swinging  on  the  top  boughs, 
trampled  fields  and  pelting  rain — and  with 
it  all  a  grandeur  more  serene  than  melan- 
choly. November's  lovers  are  not  per- 
verse, declaring  this.  They  see  half- 
indicated  colors  and  hear  low  sounds. 
They  love  the  mellow  light  better  than 
the  blaze  of  rich  July,  and  they  are  loyal 
to  November  because  she  speaks  in  quiet 
tones  not  heard  through  the  eagerness  or 
snow  silence  of  other  months.  It  is  the 
sentimentalist  who  sees  only  gloom  and 
the  weariness  of  departure  now.  Novem- 
ber is  ruddier  than  many  a  day  of  spring 

[64] 


NOVEMBER  TRAITS 

and  the  sharp  air  forbids  languor.  Indian 
summer,  her  gift  and  our  most  fleeting 
season,  is  like  the  autumn  ecstasy  of  the 
partridge,  passionate  and  irresistible,  but 
not  ending  in  despondency  because  he 
knows  it  will  return,  and  it  is  like  joy  in 
that  it  cannot  be  foreseen  nor  detained. 
The  bacchanal  may  have  dreaded  Novem- 
ber, not  the  dryad. 


[65] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER     ^     CHAPTER 
XII.     THE   CHRISTMAS  WOODS         •» 

iHE  Southern  woods  hang 
their  Christmas  trimmings 
high.  Laurel  and  rhododen- 
dron, mistletoe  and  holly, 
reach  up  against  the  walls  of 
tinted  bark.  Our  Northern  forests  trail 
greens  along  the  floor,  and  roped  ground 
pine,  pricking  through  the  prone  leaves 
or  a  gentle  snow,  appears  as  a  procession 
of  tiny  palm  trees,  come  North  for  the 
holiday,  surprised  and  lost,  but  determined 
to  keep  together.  Under  the  haw  bushes 
and  over  spruce  roots,  wherever  shade  was 
thick  last  summer,  partridge  vines  twine 
red-berried  wreaths  and  the  little  plants 

[66] 


THE   CHRISTMAS   WOODS 

of  wintergreen  flavor  and  of  that  wander- 
ing name  hold  their  rubies  low  on  the 
mountain  side.  After  the  enduring  snows 
have  come,  these  glimmering  fruits  will  be 
requisitioned — dug  out  by  the  furry  owners 
of  such  plantations  on  days  when  even 
covered  roots  seem  barren  of  sap,  and  nuts 
should  really  be  saved  awhile  longer. 
Clumps  of  sword  fern,  beaten  down  by 
November  rains,  are  round  green  mats; 
other  ferns  long  ago  were  brown.  But 
seldom  save  in  its  sunsets  and  woodlands 
has  December  color.  Ponds,  fanged 
with  ice,  he  sullen  or  stir  resentfully  into 
whitecaps.  The  sky  is  stony  and  often 
vanishes  in  brooding  fog.  Uncloaked,  but 
courageous  in  their  gray  armor,  the  trees 
wait  tensely  for  the  intolerable  onslaught 
of  the  cold:  the  blizzard  with  knives  of 
sleet. 

Over  the  marshes  at  the  hour  of  dusk 
when  the  bronze  and  topaz  are  quenched 
passes  the  breath  of  foreboding.  Decem- 
ber acknowledges  an  unpitying  fate — any- 
thing may  happen.  It  is  not  the  fireside 
month,  softly  white  outdoors  and  candlelit 
within.  Time  of  miracles,  it  stands  ex- 
pectant, and  the  thronging  stars  of  the 

7  [67] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

Christmas  midnight  wear  a  restless  look. 
Rutted  paths  answer  harshly  to  the  step. 
Delayed  snow  is  a  menace  in  the  air,  but 
lands  beyond  the  cities  would  be  grateful 
should  it  hasten,  bringing  safety  to  the 
soil  and  winter  peace.  Yet  snow  is  a  be- 
trayer, a  sheet  of  paper  upon  which  the 
feet  of  rabbit,  mink,  and  fox  write  a  guide 
to  their  dwellings  and  to  the  whole  plan 
of  their  days. 

Snow  for  Christmas  there  must  be — on 
the  lighted  trees  indoors,  on  our  far- 
scattered,  similar  cards.  But  save  as  a 
convenience  to  the  reindeer  and  a  com- 
pliment to  their  driver,  who  cannot  create 
his  stocking  stock  unless  he  is  snowbound, 
and  who  must  feel  sadly  languid  as  he 
tears  through  Florida  heavens,  city  people 
would  quite  willingly  manage  with  alum. 
Early  in  school  life,  however,  comes  the 
dangerous  knowledge  that  nothing  is  so 
easy  to  draw  as  Christmas  Eve:  a  white 
hillside,  a  path  of  one  unchanging  curve, 
a  steeple  or  a  chimney  with  smoke,  a  fir 
tree  or  a  star.  Thus  snow  eases  art  for 
the  credulous  who  think  it  white.  Glitter- 
ing under  starlight,  shadowed  with  purple, 
lemon,  or  deep  blue  as  sunset  turns  to 

[68] 


THE  CHRISTMAS   WOODS 

evening,  taking  on  daffodil  hues  at  noon, 
snow  is  harder  to  paint.  Fretted  with 
windy  tracery  and  drawn  out  into  stream- 
ing lines  where  the  gale  races  along  by  a 
fence,  snow  is  not,  on  Christmas  greetings, 
permitted  to  be  seen. 

The  first  snowstorm  of  the  year  should 
be  sent  from  Labrador  on  Christmas  Eve 
and  sprinkled  impartially  and  ornament- 
ally over  all  the  land.  Then,  the  Yule 
atmosphere  once  provided,  the  distribution 
should  be  confined  to  the  rural  clientele 
until  the  next  December,  for  on  streets 
the  hoar  frost  is  indeed  like  ashes.  But 
why,  in  somber  justice,  should  the  far 
South  pretend  to  holiday  snow  at  all? 
Why  not  Christmas  cards  pranked  with 
live  oaks,  alligators,  lagoons,  and  other 
beauties  of  an  Everglade  scene — an  in- 
spiring escape  from  tradition  and  senti- 
ment? For  the  antlered  steeds  must 
prance  above  hibiscus  flowers  as  well  as 
round  the  Pole.  Yet  it  must  seem  dull  to 
hang  stockings  by  a  fireplace  that  needs 
fire  merely  as  a  decoration  and  never  to 
have  loved  a  sleigh ! 

Abandoned,  but  still  no  downcast  com- 
pany, slanting  corn  shocks  not  honored 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

with  winter  shelter  stand  patient  sentinels 
in  the  field.  Abandoned  they  may  seem, 
yet  could  you  suddenly  tip  one  over  there 
would  be  a  startled  scurrying,  for  these 
are  the  choice  snow-time  residences  of 
field  mice,  cottontails,  weasels,  and  meadow 
moles — not,  of  course,  together  in  har- 
mony, but  in  their  separate  establish- 
ments. Let  the  blizzard  come;  it  only 
makes  warmer  a  house  of  cornstalks  prop- 
erly built,  which  bears,  nevertheless,  some 
of  the  dangers  of  a  gingerbread  home — 
passing  cows  may  feel  tempted. 

Vermilion  heraldry  of  the  wild  rose  is 
waved  undimmed.  Witch-hazel  with  her 
yellow  blossoms,  last  flowers  of  the  year, 
gazes  upon  the  vanquished  shrubs  about 
her  with  a  smile.  Why,  she  will  not  even 
sow  her  seed  until  February!  There  is 
plenty  of  time  for  hardy  petals. 

Massed  against  the  stern  horizon,  the 
forest  stands  an  unresponsive  gray;  en- 
tered, the  twigs  are  seen  sleek  brown,  dark 
red,  and  a  fawn  soft  as  the  tan  orchid. 
In  towns  December  shows  the  iron  mood. 
But  in  the  open  places,  where  pools  of 
light  and  shadow  lie,  it  is  a  water-color 
month,  made  fine  with  no  gorgeous  velvets 

[70] 


THE   CHRISTMAS  WOODS 

of  autumn,  but  hung  with  blending  veils 
of  dawn  mist  and  of  new  snow,  so  that  the 
subdued  day  rises  in  flushed,  drifting 
vapors,  like  April's  awakening,  and  when 
the  sun  comes,  pale,  we  wonder  that  there 
is  no  summons  in  his  light. 


[71] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER  °$  CHAPTER 
XIII.  ^  LANDSCAPES  SEEN  IN 
DREAMS  ^  •$  «g  «g 

JHE  painter  of  landscapes  seen 
in  dreams  must  be  a  memory 
that  knows  fantastic  woods 
and  faery  seas  all  strange  to 
the  waking  memory.  Or  else 
the  artist  is  only  a  weariness  with  the  day 
just  past  that  gives  us  in  sleep  sight  of  the 
country  which,  so  Mr.  Maugham  and 
other  story-tellers  say,  is  the  real  home 
that  men  may  go  their  whole  lives  long 
without  finding,  because  we  are  not  always 
born  at  home,  nor  even  brought  up  there, 
and  we  might  for  years  be  homesick  for  a 

land  unseen.    Once  beheld,  the  recognition 
[72] 


LANDSCAPES   SEEN    IN   DREAMS 

is  instant,  and  in  the  foreign  place  begins 
a  vita  nuova  —  relief  and  an  intensity  of 
living  never  known  before  the  new  and 
familiar  harbor  came  down  to  meet  us  at 
the  shore.  So  sometimes  it  is  in  dreams. 
Recurrent  and  vivid,  a  scene  of  sheerest 
unreality  will  take  on  an  earthly  air,  or 
landscapes  flamboyantly  exotic  will  hold 
the  peace  denied  by  every  country  it  has 
been  our  daily  fortune  to  know. 

Dream  landscapes  come  back  again  and 
again,  as  if  they  waited  there  forever,  sub- 
stantial, and  we  were  the  transient  comers. 
Some,  in  ether  dreams,  shrink  always  from 
the  same  green  waves,  the  same  black, 
open  mine,  and  two  have  now  and  then 
been  found  who  saw  on  sleep  journeys 
places  that  words  repictured  curiously 
alike.  The  fantasies  may  be  patchwork 
of  poems,  plays,  and  paintings  long  for- 
gotten, but  when  they  rise  in  their  com- 
pelling fusion  they  owe  no  debt  to  the 
lumber  attic  of  the  subconscious.  The 
world  they  fashion  is  their  own,  and  they 
do  offer  by  their  ethereal  pathway  a  com- 
pensation for  the  insufficiencies  of  life. 

There  is  a  long,  uncurving  sea  strand 
whose  gray  immensity  of  sands  lies  smooth 
(73] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

for  miles  along  the  upper  beach,  but  is 
feathered  near  the  water  by  the  stroking 
of  little  afterwaves,  and  draped  unendingly 
with  umber  bands  of  kelp.  Here  as  in 
no  place  seen  the  seaweed  laces  are 
edged  with  colors  ground  in  unlighted 
depths,  as  if  the  tide  cast  carvings  of 
lapis  lazuli  and  feldspar  up  with  the  argent 
pebbles,  and  all  the  drifting  alga3  are  in- 
crusted  with  yellow  shells.  Shoreward  the 
palms  climb  up  until  they  make  a  green 
horizon,  and  their  unnatural  fronds  sink 
down  again  like  green  chiffon  that  veils 
the  entrance  to  the  pensive  forest.  Vines 
with  scented  flowers  as  intangible  as  fog 
creep  over  root  and  trunk,  and  among  them 
now  and  then  with  soundless  foot  and 
molten  eye  a  leopard  winds.  Perpetual 
sunset  wanes  and  glows  behind  the  palms. 
There  is  never  any  wind.  The  violence  of 
the  ocean,  the  beasts,  the  tempest,  is  held 
in  languorous  leash  while  the  treader  of  the 
sands  goes  on  with  unfelt  steps  toward 
rocks  where  the  waters  break  importunate 
and  sink  moaning  back.  They  hang  black 
above  a  cave,  and  waves  come  in  to  prowl 
and  snakes  with  scales  like  gems  twine 
back  and  forth,  glittering  in  the  half  light, 

[74] 


LANDSCAPES    SEEN    IN    DREAMS 

with  narcotic  and  effortless  motion,  until 
they  with  the  rocks  and  all  the  scene  fade. 

A  tiny  stream,  a  pixy's  river,  slips  from 
beneath  a  bowlder  in  a  wood  long  known, 
and  leads  through  thicket,  glade,  and  clear- 
ing to  a  terrifying  land,  desolated  by  an- 
cient fires  and  strewn  with  blackened 
stones  and  charred  boughs.  The  place 
itself  is  athirst,  and  the  dreamer  kneels  to 
drink.  The  tiny  stream  is  dark,  like  a  deep 
water,  and  bitter  cold  as  if  it  flowed 
through  ice.  A  staff  thrust  down  cannot 
sound  its  depths.  A  finger's  span  across 
and  bottomless!  Nothing  could  dam  its 
flow.  Old  embers  at  its  borders  are  sud- 
denly scattered  when  a  gleaming  hand 
parts  the  current  and  waves  back  toward 
the  way  just  traced,  but  the  flame-blasted 
firs  have  closed  behind  into  a  forbidding 
wall.  Other  pallid  fingers  rise  from  the 
portal  of  the  abyss  in  warning  gesture,  but 
the  narrow  gulf  opens  underfoot. 

There  is  a  town  where  gay  people  in 
white  dress  promenade  in  a  plaza  shaded 
by  orange  trees,  and  they  are  always  hum- 
ming tunes.  Little  white  streets  lead  to 
shuttered  houses.  A  glory  of  buginvillsea 
overflows  trellis  and  bower  in  splendid  war 
[75] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

with  the  hibiscus  hedges  and  the  dropping 
yellow  fruit.  Down  the  hill  and  over 
cobblestones,  pursued  by  music  and  laugh- 
ter, ministered  to  by  odors  of  the  lemon 
blossom,  he  whom  sleep  leads  here  may 
go  toward  a  lake  of  fluent  amethyst.  The 
way  is  past  the  market  place  where  brown 
women  crouch  by  baskets  of  brilliant  wares 
and  venders  of  glistening  lizards  sit  drow- 
sily bent,  and  then  at  a  step  the  forest 
dense  and  brooding  is  above  him  and  its 
low  boughs  sweep  the  ripple  of  the  lake. 
Immense  leaves  hang  like  curtains,  and 
among  them  men  with  unquiet  eyes  move 
and  hold  monotoned  speech  while  they 
hew  sparkling  rock  into  monstrous  shapes. 
They  are  circling  round  a  pit.  They  cast 
in  ornaments  of  opal  and  dark  gold  and 
garlands  of  venomous  forest  growths,  gray 
and  blood-red,  tied  with  withered  vines. 
Cries  come  from  the  pit,  but  the  chant 
never  stops. 

Marching  from  a  stronghold  far  up  on 
a  mountain  of  cedars,  men  in  mail  come 
at  dusk  with  standards  flickering  crimson, 
fringed  with  gold,  down  to  a  valley  full 
of  blossomed  iris  where  there  is  a  wide 
pool  with  torches  at  its  rim.  Their  flare 

[76] 


LANDSCAPES   SEEN    IN    DREAMS 

streams  out  toward  the  circling  cliffs. 
Each  marcher  dips  his  silken  flag  into  the 
quiet  waters,  and  lights  rise  upon  the 
battlements  above  as  one  by  one  all  the 
black  plumes  are  lost  in  the  meadow's  dark- 
ness and  the  torches  burn  low  and  fall 
into  the  pool. 

A  garden  planted  only  with  dark-red 
nasturtiums  that  lift  for  the  dreamer's 
touch  a  flower's  velvet  cheek  lies  filmed 
with  dew  and  fragrant  as  a  noon  breath 
from  Ceylon  spice  groves.  The  miracle  of 
color  is  spread  along  a  hillside  up  to  a 
high  wall  of  great  gray  stones,  and  inside 
the  gate  is  a  house  grown  all  over  with 
grapevines,  some  borne  down  by  blue 
clusters  with  shadowy  bloom,  some  by 
clusters  of  topaz  and  ripe  green.  There 
is  a  pond  among  the  grasses,  where  broad, 
wan  lilies  float,  and  purple  pansies  border 
all  the  walks.  Very  slowly  the  paneled 
door  opens  and  the  sun  floods  the  central 
hall.  It  is  hung  with  silver  draperies,  and 
an  old  woman  stands  there  with  a  candle, 
mumbling  and  peering  in  a  cataract  of 
light. 


177] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER     °$     CHAPTER 
XIV.      HIDING   PLACES  *$  °$ 

tHILDHOOD  remembers  a 
secret  place — refuge,  confes- 
sional, and  couch  of  dreams 
— where  through  the  years 
that  bring  the  first  bewilder- 
ing hints  of  creation's  loneliness  he  goes 
to  hide  and  to  rebuild  the  joyous  world 
that  every  now  and  then  is  laid  in  flowery 
ruins  beneath  the  trampling  necessities  of 
growing  up.  These  little  nooks  where  we 
confronted  so  many  puzzles,  wondered  over 
incomprehension,  and  looked  into  the  hard 
eyes  of  derision,  abide  caressingly  for 
memory,  who  flies  to  them  still  from  cities 
of  dreadful  light.  The  need  for  those 

[78] 


HIDING   PLACES 

small  havens  is  lifelong.  They  are  rarely 
at  hand  in  later  days,  but  no  locked  door 
and  no  walled  chamber  of  the  mind  can 
take  their  place. 

The  suns  of  midsummer,  tempered  by 
spruce  boughs,  flicker  and  play  upon  a 
broad-backed  rock  where  fairy  pools  made 
by  the  late  rain  in  its  crannies  are  fre- 
quented by  waxwing  and  woodpecker,  even 
though  an  intruder  sleeps  upon  that 
dryad's  couch.  Brakes  and  sweet  fern 
crowd  around  it.  Tasseled  alders  are  its 
curtains.  Here  one  might  be  forever  at 
rest.  It  is  to  such  a  place  that  rebel 
wishes  turn  when  the  early  grass  and  clover 
thicken  in  the  pastures  or  when  the  sum- 
mer birds  begin  their  slow  recessional. 
The  longing  to  lie  upon  a  sun-warmed  rock 
in  the  woods  comes  back  desperately  in 
April  and  October  to  them  who  once  have 
known  that  place  of  healing  and  stillness. 

Yellow  bells  from  the  wands  of  circling 
forsythia  bushes  drop  into  a  deep  hollow 
lined  with  velvet  grass.  Pale  butterflies 
of  new-come  May  flutter  among  the  dande- 
lions that  bejewel  this  emerald  cup  of  Gaea, 
and  sometimes  drowsy  wings  are  folded 
sleepily  upon  a  gold  rosette.  Light  beams 

[79] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

pass  and  repass  in  jubilance  over  the  grass 
blades.  The  sun  is  enchanted  in  the  clear 
yellow  of  the  flowers.  Glints,  movement, 
gayety,  and  withal  peace  and  silence  were 
in  that  place  of  exultant  color  and  radiant 
life.  It  was  a  rare  spot,  and  unvisited 
save  by  birds  in  quest  of  screening  branches 
for  their  nests  and  perhaps  by  some  one 
who  hid  there  and  always  had  to  laugh 
before  he  left. 

A  round  space  of  soft  sward  is  guarded 
by  strawberry  shrub  and  by  the  bridal- 
wreath  spiraea  that  droops  white  branches 
lowly  to  the  ground.  Here  you  could  lie 
on  a  moonlit  summer  night,  with  arms 
outstretched  and  face  pressed  into  the  soft 
grass,  and  beneath  your  fingers  you  could 
feel  the  world  turn  on  and  on,  immensely, 
soothingly,  and  everlastingly,  the  only 
sound  the  bats'  wings  above,  or  a  baby 
robin  protesting  musically  at  the  slowness 
of  the  night's  divine  pace.  Here  the  smell 
of  the  sod  is  keen  and  sweet.  Here  dew 
would  cool  a  throbbing  brow.  Here  the 
undertones  of  earth  vibrate  through  the 
body,  and  all  its  nerves,  strung  to  intense 
perception,  yet  would  be  wrapped  in  per- 
suasive peace. 

[80] 


HIDING   PLACES 

An  old  balm-o'-Gilead  tree,  growing  on 
a  hillside,  kindly  lets  down  one  mighty 
limb  as  pathway  to  a  leafy  hiding  place 
incomparably  remote  and  dimly  lighted 
even  at  noon.  The  branches  make  an 
armchair  far  back  against  the  trunk,  and 
that  glossy  foliage,  always  cool,  swishes 
like  waves  at  low  tide.  The  tree  has  much 
to  tell,  but  never  an  intrusive  word.  You 
may  sit  there  with  a  book  or  in  the  dis- 
tracting company  of  secret  happiness  or 
tears,  and  it  will  ignore  you  courteously, 
going  on  about  its  daylong  task  of  gather- 
ing greenness  from  the  sun,  and  only  from 
time  to  time  touching  your  hand  with  an 
inquiring  leaf.  Sometimes  a  red  squirrel 
looks  in  and  departs  in  shocked  fashion 
through  the  air.  Sometimes  the  sheep 
pass  far  below  on  their  way  home.  But 
the  refuge  is  secure,  and  the  balm-o'- 
Gilead's  cradling  arms  wait  peacefully  to 
hold  an  asking  child. 

A  foamy  brown  brook  that  flashes  and 
dallies,  is  captured  and  breaks  free  again, 
down  along  the  mountain  has  been  coaxed 
by  some  wood  nymph  to  furnish  sparkling 
water  for  her  round  rock  bath.  Dutifully 
it  pours  in  every  moment  its  curveting 
8  181] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

freshness,  bringing  now  and  then  the  trib- 
ute of  a  laurel  leaf  or  a  petal  from  some 
flower  that  bent  too  close.  This  bath  is 
gemmed  with  glittering  quartz  and  floored 
with  red  and  white  pebbles.  Gray  mosses 
broider  it  where  the  sun  lies,  and  dark 
green  where  the  water  drips.  The  nymph 
has  been  at  some  pains  to  train  the  five- 
finger  ivy  and  nightshade  heavily  all  about, 
and  the  great  brakes  carpet  the  path  her 
gleaming  feet  must  tread  at  sunrise. 
Now  at  noon  you  may  come  there,  trou- 
bling no  living  drapery,  and  dangle  your 
feet  over  the  moss  into  the  dimpling  cool- 
ness of  that  mountain  pool.  A  trout 
might  dart  in,  a  red  lizard  appear  upon  a 
ledge,  but  nothing  else.  The  wild-cherry 
clusters  hang  within  reach. 

In  the  corner  of  a  meadow  where  dis- 
passionate cows  graze  and  snort  scorn- 
fully at  the  collie  who  comes  to  get  them 
in  the  late  afternoon  stands  a  great  red 
oak  that  has  somehow  inspired  the  grass 
underneath  it  to  grow  to  tropic  heights. 
.But  between  two  of  its  wandering  ancient 
roots  is  short  grass,  woven  with  canary- 
flowered  cinquefoil  vines,  and  into  this 

nook  you  may  creep,  screened  by  wind- 
[82] 


HIDING   PLACES 

ruffled  blades  beyond,  and  taste  of  the 
white  wild  strawberries  that  reach  their 
eerie  ripeness  in  the  shade.  A  woodchuck 
may  sit  up  and  gaze  at  you  across  the 
barrier,  or  a  bright-eyed  chipmunk  scuttle 
out  on  a  limb  for  a  better  view.  They 
leave  you  alone  soon,  and  at  twilight  even 
the  cow  bell  is  quiet. 

A  balsam  fir  that  grows  on  a  bowlder 
leaning  out  halfway  down  a  ravine  hospit- 
ably spreads  its  aromatic  boughs  flat  upon 
the  rock,  after  the  inviting  manner  of  this 
slumber-giving  Northern  tree.  The  very 
breath  of  the  hills  is  shed  here.  It  is 
almost  dark  by  day,  and  at  night  the  stars 
show  yellow  above  the  upper  firs.  The 
wind  goes  murmuring  between  gray  walls, 
and  the  sound  of  the  stream,  far  down, 
comes  vaguely  save  in  the  freshet  month. 
This  is  the  farthest  hiding  place  of  all. 
Only  the  daring  would  find  the  perilous 
way  to  its  solitude. 


[83] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER    «i?     CHAPTER 
XV.     THE   PLAY  OF  LEAVES      «      « 

)OR  fox  and  partridge,  fawn 
and  squirrel — all  the  wood 
dwellers  that  run  or  fly — 
youth,  like  the  rest  of  life,  is 
a  time  of  stress  and  effort. 
They  have  a  short  babyhood  and  little 
childhood.  Once  they  begin  to  move  they 
must  take  up  for  themselves  the  burden 
of  those  that  prey  and  are  preyed  upon. 
They  step  from  nest  or  den  into  a  world 
in  arms  against  them,  and  while  they 
sensibly  fail  to  worry  over  this,  undoubt- 
edly it  complicates  their  fun.  Baby  foxes 
playing  are  winsome  innocents,  but  they 
have  become  sly  and  wary  while  lambs, 

[84] 


THE   PLAY  OF  LEAVES 

colts,  and  calves  are  still  making  them- 
selves admirably  ridiculous  in  fenced  mea- 
dows. And  neither  hunter,  hawk,  nor 
wildcat  makes  allowances  for  the  youth 
and  inexperience  of  debutante  game. 

It  is  different  with  little  leaves.  They 
are  as  playful  as  kittens,  with  their  dances, 
poses,  flutters,  their  delicate  bursts  of  glee. 
Unless  involved  with  flowers,  or  with  tim- 
ber or  real  estate,  they  are  safe,  not  alone 
in  winter  babyhood,  but  through  spring 
and  summer,  that  minister  to  them  with 
baths  of  dew  and  rain  and  with  the  som- 
nolent wine  of  the  sun.  Only  when  old 
age  has  brought  weariness  with  winds  and 
heat,  and  even  with  the  drawing  of  sap, 
are  they  confronted  by  their  enemy,  frost. 
You  will  say,  caterpillars,  forest  fires,  but 
they  are  the  fault  of  man  and  an  unan- 
ticipated flaw  in  nature's  plan  for  letting 
the  leaves  off  easily.  We  brought  foreign 
trees  that  had  their  own  mysterious  pro- 
tection at  home  into  lands  where  that 
immunity  vanished,  and  so  the  chestnut 
has  left  us,  and  apple  and  rose  are  threat- 
ened by  foes  whom  their  mother  had  not 
foreseen.  Were  it  not  for  man's  mistakes 
the  leaves  would  have  had  an  outrageously 

[85] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

gay  time  by  comparison  with  the  .darkling 
lives  of  the  creatures  that  move  among 
them  and  beneath  them. 

All  winter  long  in  its  leaf  bud  the  baby 
tulip  leaf  drowses,  curled  up  tight.  It  is 
completely  ready  to  spring  full  formed 
into  the  light  as  soon  as  the  frost  line  has 
been  driven  back  by  the  triumphant  lances 
of  the  sun,  and  there  it  dips  and  laughs 
and  nods,  and  sometimes  goes  quite  wild 
when  a  running  breeze  comes  by  at  the 
hour  wherein  morning  makes  opals  of 
July's  heavy  dew.  The  poplars,  the 
maidenhair  trees,  shake  out  spangles  then. 
The  maples  show  their  silver  sides.  Al- 
ways the  forest  lives  and  breathes, 
but  when  the  new  leaves  come  it  draws 
long,  shuddering  breaths  of  delight. 
Whoever  has  dwelt  with  trees  knows  how 
differently  the  small  leaves  of  May  talk 
from  the  draped  and  weighted  boughs  of 
August. 

Stepping  along  the  rustling  wood  road, 
you  can  hear  the  reveries  of  the  leaves 
around  you.  They  whisper  and  sigh  in 
youth;  they  reach  out  to  touch  the  friendly 
stranger's  cheek.  In  summer  they  hang 
their  patterned  curtains  tenderly  about 

[86] 


THE  PLAY  OF  LEAVES 

him,  in  a  silence  made  vocal  only  by  a 
teasing  gale.  In  autumn  they  are  loud 
beneath  his  tread.  Snow  alone  can  hush 
them.  When  they  are  voiceless  they  are 
dead  at  last,  but  already  their  successors, 
snugly  cradled  and  blanketed  with  cotton, 
are  being  rocked  to  sleep  upon  the  twigs. 

The  rippling,  shimmering  birch  upon  a 
wind-stroked  hill  talks  with  falling  cadence, 
like  a  chant.  The  naiad  willow,  arching 
lowland  brooks,  speaks  as  water,  very 
secretly.  The  oak  could  not  be  silent, 
with  his  story  of  many  days  to  tell,  and 
keeping  his  leaves  throughout  the  snow 
time,  his  speech  is  perpetual.  Only  the 
pines  and  kindred  evergreens  are  now  and 
then  melancholy,  as  if  the  new  needles  and 
leaves  looked  down  upon  the  carpet  below, 
forever  thickened,  of  those  whose  hold 
grew  faint.  Leaves  of  cherry  and  apple, 
born  into  a  world  of  tinted  blossoms,  are 
gay  to  the  last.  The  sprays  of  locust 
leaves  that  keep  their  yellow-green  until 
the  sober  tree  flowers  into  clustered  fra- 
grance of  white,  arboreal  sweet  peas  whis- 
per by  night  and  day  of  the  bats  and  tree 
toads  that  dwell  in  their  channeled  and 
vine-loved  bark.  The  sycamore's  voice  is 
[87] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

cool-toned  and  light,  but  the  mountain  ash 
murmurs  low,  and  low  the  beech. 

Watching  leaves  adrift  on  November 
winds,  there  comes  the  memory  of  Steven- 
son's song  of  another  ended  life — of  days 
they  "lived  the  better  part.  April  came 
to  bloom  and  never  dun  December 
breathed  its  killing  chill."  But  the  tree 
that  wore  them,  standing  in  stripped 
starkness  that  month — if  stark  means 
strong  —  shall  enter  dazzling  splendors 
when  the  days  of  ice  storms  come.  That 
miracle  of  lucent  grayness,  an  elm  in  the 
morning  sun,  when  every  branch  and  every 
smallest  twig  is  cased  in  ice  outdoes  its 
green  enchantments  of  June.  It  is  more 
beautiful  than  a  tree  of  coral.  It  is  the 
color  of  pussy  willows  made  to  shine.  It 
is  as  gray  as  sunrise  cobwebs  on  the  grass, 
as  starlight  on  dew.  Its  branches,  tossed 
by  January,  clash  sword  on  delicate  sword, 
or,  left  quiet,  the  elm  stands  like  a  pensive 
dancer  and  swings  against  one  another 
long  strands  of  crystal  beads.  And  in  the 
city  little  ice-sheathed  maples  along  an 
avenue,  glistening  under  white  arc  lights, 
surpass  the  changing  lusters  of  gray 
enamel.  Trees  robed  in  ice  are  the  very 

[88] 


THE  PLAY  OF   LEAVES 

home  of  light,  of  fire  frozen  fast  in  water 
and  turned  pale. 

Between  the  going  and  coming  of  the 
leaves  the  sky  is  background  for  the  cun- 
ning lacework  of  twigs.  Were  it  always 
May,  we  should  never  see  how  finely 
wrought  is  the  loom  upon  which  those 
leafy  embroideries  are  woven.  In  autumn 
the  design  is  more  austere,  the  colors  show 
more  somber,  but  when  the  March  branches 
flush  with  sap,  and  the  buds,  waking, 
put  forth  hesitant  green  fingers,  that  in- 
finitely complex  tracery  of  the  twigs  is  a 
spring  charm  as  moving  as  the  perfume 
of  the  thorn.  Outlined  against  a  sunset, 
it  foretells  in  beauty  the  months  when  the 
leaf  chorus  will  sound  with  the  birds'. 


(89] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER     <$     CHAPTER 
XVI.     THE   BROWN  FRONTIER         •» 

E  warm  March  noon  a 
hushing  wing  is  lifted  from 
the  piping  nest  of  earth. 
Voices  of  forest  floor,  tree 
trunk,  and  lowground  break 
f  orth,[never  to  be  silent  again  until  Thanks- 
giving weather  finds  a  muted  world. 
Croon  and  murmur  from  the  swaying 
grasses,  brief  lyrics  from  the  top  of  the 
thorn,  a  sunrise  chant  from  the  bee  tree, 
rise  and  fall  through  all  the  hours  of  dew 
and  light,  intense  in  the  sun-rusted  fields, 
climbing  to  an  ecstatic  swan  song  when 
frosts  hover  close.  Whoever  walks  through 
middle  realms  of  the  woods,  never  lying 

[90] 


THE  BROWN  FRONTIER 

on  the  mosses  nor  winning  to  skyward 
branches  of  the  trees,  has  not  shared  the 
earth's  most  ardent  life — the  pensive  songs 
a  bird  sings  merely  for  himself;  his  im- 
pulsive, goalless  flights;  and  rarer  still  the 
industry  and  traffic  at  the  roots  of  growth: 
the  epic  of  the  ground. 

Cricket  follows  pickering  frog  and 
cicada  cricket.  That  earliest  invisible 
singer  asks  only  a  little  warmth  in  the 
waters  of  the  pond  to  melt  the  springs  of 
frozen  song.  He  comes  with  lady's- 
tresses,  pussy  willows,  and  unfurling  lily 
pads.  The  cricket,  sleepy-voiced  in  the 
August  afternoon,  grows  gay  at  twilight, 
and  does  his  best  when  the  firefly  and  bat 
are  abroad,  darting  out  from  the  creeper- 
veiled  bark  and  setting  sail  upon  the 
placid  air.  Locusts  play  persistently  a 
G  string  out  of  tune  until,  when  the  first 
goldenrod  peers  above  the  yarrow,  the 
overwhelming  night  chorus  of  the  katy- 
dids is  heard,  lifted  bravely  again  and 
again  within  the  domains  of  autumn,  not 
quenched  before  the  bittersweet  berry  and 
the  chestnut  fling  open  portals  and  sur- 
render to  the  cold. 

Little  they  know  of  trees  who  have  not 

[91] 


MINSTREL   WEATHER 

seen  spruce  and  larches  against  the  deep 
October  sky,  looking  straight  up  from  a 
yielding  club-moss  pillow.  The  outlines 
and  colors  of  the  quiet  branches  are  shown 
most  memorably  upon  the  vault  of  that 
arching  lapis-lazuli  roof,  draped  with  float- 
ing chiffon  of  the  clouds.  Climb  up  among 
the  boughs,  and  the  carven  quality  is  gone. 
They  are  dim  and  soft.  You  must  go 
close  to  earth  to  behold  tree- top  forms. 
The  supine  view  is  magical. 

Revealed  in  uncanny  splendor  by  the 
death  of  verdure,  brilliant  and  evil  fungi 
come  from  the  dark  mold  in  fall,  orange 
and  copper,  vermilion  and  cinnabar,  dwell- 
ing as  vampires  upon  trees  brought  low. 
Some  wear  the  terra-cotta  of  the  alert 
little  lizards  that,  inquisitive  as  squirrels, 
will  lift  their  heads  from  bark  or  stone 
and  give  back  gaze  for  gaze.  As  leaves 
that  came  from  the  sap  of  roots  go  back 
to  the  roots  in  ashes,  so  ants  take  care 
that  fallen  oaks  shall  be  transformed  into 
the  soil  from  which  young  oaks  will  spring, 
and  brown  dust,  when  they  have  ended, 
is  all  that  abides  of  the  tallest  tree.  Among 
them  pass  the  bobbing,  glistening  beetles. 
This  immortal  and  thronging  activity  of 

[92] 


THE   BROWN   FRONTIER 

the  loam  can  be  heard,  if  you  bend  low 
enough  and  listen  long. 

When  the  air  is  frost-clear  fairy  land- 
scapes, hidden  since  spring  came  with 
mists  and  masking  leaves,  rise  with  an 
effect  of  unbeheld  creation.  Small  pools 
appear,  and  avenues  among  the  bracken 
that  still  wave  banners  of  chestnut  and 
old  gold.  The  lonely  homes  of  ground- 
nesting  birds  grow  visible.  Trinkets  are 
scattered  as  the  forest  makes  ready  for 
night — tiny  cones,  abandoned  snail  shells, 
and  feathers  which  the  woodpecker  and 
oriole  dropped  when  they  took  leave. 
The  sun  dapples  with  yellow  the  partridge 
haunts  where  once  drooped  films  of  maiden- 
hair fern. 

The  home  that  the  squirrel  built  for  his 
summer  idyl  is  shattered  by  the  winds 
aloft  and  falls  to  earth  with  other  finished 
things.  The  feathery  wrack  of  cat-tails 
sails  the  waters  and  is  hung  upon  the 
grasses  of  the  marsh.  Fallow  fields  spread 
a  tangle  of  livid  stems,  but  jewels  lie  in 
the  wood  road,  for  berries,  the  last  har- 
vest, are  shaken  down  by  bird  gleaners 
from  vine  and  shrub,  where  they  hang  in 
festal  plenty,  so  that  all  hardy  creatures 

[93] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

that  do  not  fly  from  winter  to  the  South 
or  to  an  underground  Nirvana  may  here 
find  reward.  Dark  blue  beads  drop  from 
the  woodbine.  The  rose  keeps  her  car- 
mine caskets,  full  of  other  roses;  but  the 
baybeny  is  generous  with  dove-gray  pebble 
seeds.  Witch-hazel,  reversing  seasons  like 
the  eccentric  trout — who,  after  all,  prob- 
ably enjoys  the  solitude  at  the  stream- 
heads  after  the  other  fish  have  gone — 
sends  wide  her  mysterious  fusillade,  and 
that,  too,  finds  its  aim  in  the  floor  of  the 
forest. 

Life  more  remote  than  that  of  snowfield 
or  jungle,  beneath  our  tread,  guarded  from 
our  glances  and  our  hearing  unless  we 
seek  it  out,  the  subtle  cycles  of  the  soil 
go  on  everlastingly,  alien  even  to  those 
who  know  in  intimacy  the  meadows  and 
the  woods.  Vigorously  though  it  toils, 
there  is  a  peace  in  the  vision  of  continuity 
delicately  given.  Most  of  the  singers  in 
the  mowing  grass  live  for  a  day,  yet  next 
morning  the  song  ascends  unbroken.  Here 
on  the  frontier  between  the  world  of  the 
air  and  that  within  the  earth  passports 
are  granted  back  and  forth — the  red  lily 
is  summoned  from  the  depths;  the  top- 

[94] 


THE  BROWN  FRONTIER 

most  acorn,  lifting  its  cup  toward  the  sky, 
obediently  falls  and  passes  through  the 
dark  barrier,  to  return  when  the  life-call 
bids.  Steadily  go  on  arrival  and  depar- 
ture. The  gorgeous  lichen  is  hung  upon 
the  rotting  log.  White  rue  rises  and  white 
snows  sink.  Fire  demons  split  the  rocks, 
and  after  them  in  a  thousand  years  conies 
bloodroot.  Floods  rush  down,  and  wind- 
flowers  and  cities  follow;  and  leisurely, 
another  spring,  the  gates  that  received 
them  part,  and  a  legion  of  new  cowslips 
marches  out. 


[95] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER     <8>     CHAPTER 
XVII.     FAR  ALTARS         °$         "8?         TB 


by  treacherous 
green  marshes  whose  mur- 
muring rushes  will  close  with- 
out a  change  of  cadence  over 
the  despair  of  the  unwarned, 
in  August  there  lives  a  scene  of  tender  and 
appealing  beauty.  The  languid  creek, 
turned  the  color  of  iron  rust  with 
its  plunder  —  spoil  of  the  wild  and  im- 
practical fertility  of  the  roots  of  bog  and 

196] 


FAR  ALTARS 

bracken — pauses  in  a  pool  that  shows  now 
brown,  now  sorrel,  now  satiny  green  as  the 
clouds  wait  or  hasten  above  and  the 
supple  rushes  lean  back  and  forth.  This 
is  the  tourney  field  of  gorgeous  dragon- 
flies.  Emerald,  gold,  and  amethyst,  they 
hold  resplendent  play,  sparkling  above  the 
water  like  magnets  of  light,  causing  the 
placid  depths  to  shimmer,  and  drawing 
the  minnows  from  their  sunlit  rest.  Even 
the  bird-dog  does  not  know  this  pool.  No 
messenger  more  personal  than  a  prowling 
shot  comes  there  from  man. 

It  is  a  sturdy  conceit  that  wonders  why 
Nature  should  spend  her  freshest  art  on 
treasure  scenes  she  decrees  invisible,  as  if 
the  mother  of  mountains,  tempests,  deserts, 
toiled  anxiously  for  the  approval  of  a 
particular  generation,  keeping  one  eye  on 
Mr.  Gray  and  the  other  on  Mr.  Emerson 
in  the  hope  that  they  will  justify  her  flower 
blushing  unseen  and  her  excusable  rhodora. 
Nature  is  far  too  unmoral  to  bother  about 
rendering  economists  an  account  for  her 
spendthrift  loveliness.  She  willfully  de- 
serts the  imitation  Sicilian  garden,  though 
she  would  be  well  paid  to  stay,  and  rollicks 
in  the  jungle,  clothing  magnificently  the 

9  [97J 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

useless  snake  and  leopard,  dressing  their 
breakfast  in  paradise  plumes,  puzzling 
Victorian  poets,  and  badly  scaring  the 
urban  manicurist,  who  returns  after  her 
first  country  vacation  with  decided  views 
concerning  the  cheerful  humanity  of  streets 
compared  with  lodges  in  the  wilderness. 

Were  Nature  careworn  and  personal, 
where  should  we  turn  for  consolation  or 
rest?  Hers  is  the  tonic  gift  of  a  strength 
that,  underlying  all  life,  does  not  pity  or 
praise.  As  hi  the  Cave  of  the  Winds  the 
most  restless  spirit  surely  might  find  peace, 
so  in  the  eternal  changefulness  of  the 
forest  under  the  touch  of  forces  fierce  or 
serene  we  find  the  soul  of  quiet  because 
the  powers  at  work  are  beyond  our  con- 
trol, control  us  utterly,  hold  us  in  an  im- 
mense and  soothing  grasp  where  thought 
and  energy  are  fused  and  contend  no  more. 
So  those  who  live  upon  the  ocean  come 
to  possess  that  which  they  will  not  barter 
for  ease,  and  so  the  timber  cruiser  shortens 
his  visit  to  town.  They  would  not  tell 
what  they  gain  who  relinquish  readily  the 
things  for  which  others  pour  out  their 
years  upon  the  ground  that  commerce  may 
grow.  It  is  because  words  are  not  fash- 

[98] 


FAR  ALTARS 

ioned  to  speak  what  shapes  the  wind  takes, 
the  motion  whereby  mists  climb  after  the 
sun  out  of  ravines,  or  how  the  tropic 
orchids  lift  at  daybreak  among  their  fra- 
grant shadows  wings  of  ivory  and  fawn 
that  drooped  against  ferny  trunks. 

Many  days  must  bloom  and  fade  be- 
tween you  and  the  sound  of  human  voices 
before,  in  the  wilderness,  there  can  be 
surrender  to  the  giant  arms  that  forever 
hold  the  body,  and  to  the  spirit,  supreme 
and  unemotional,  that  has  sped  beyond 
the  utmost  outposts  the  mind  ever  reached. 
But  after  the  homecoming — when  the  con- 
fused echoes  of  a  swarming,  blind  humanity 
are  lost  in  the  exalted  quiet  of  wide 
spaces — the  vast  impersonality  of  woods 
and  plains,  swamps,  hills,  and  sea,  takes 
on  a  tenderness  more  deep  than  lies  in 
human  gift  and  a  glorious  hostility  that 
calls  to  combat  without  grudge  or  motive, 
ennobling  because  it  gives  no  mercy; 
challenges  alike  the  craft  of  man  and  the 
strength  of  the  hills. 

The  exuberant  fancy  of  a  less  earnest 
day  made  air  and  fire  the  dwellings  of 
creatures  formed  like  ourselves,  and, 
though  immortal,  shod  with  lightning, 

[99] 


MINSTREL  WEATHER 

guarded  from  common  sight,  they  were 
afflicted  with  our  own  vexations,  our  loves 
and  hates.  Nymph  and  naiad,  faun  and 
satyr,  were  always  plotting  and  gossiping, 
and  little  better  were  the  subsequent 
gnomes  and  fairies — more  personal  and 
cantankerous  than  persons;  resorting  upon 
occasion  to  divorce;  tangling  skeins,  and 
teasing  kind  old  horses.  These  were  not 
the  earth  deities. 

Earth  deities  wear  no  human  shape. 
No  one  has  looked  upon  the  sky  fire's  face, 
the  pinions  of  the  gale.  Enormously  they 
have  wrought,  without  regard  for  man  and 
sharing  no  passion,  yet  yielding  some- 
times their  limitless  force  to  the  mind 
that  soared  with  them.  In  the  age  of 
winged  serpents,  in  the  days  when  Assyria 
was  mistress,  they  were  the  same,  holding 
an  equal  welcome  for  the  boy  and  sage, 
unchanging  and  unresting,  free  from  mortal 
attributes  of  good  and  evil,  mighty  and 
healing  as  no  half-human  god  could  be. 
Therefore  that  lavish  scattering  of  beauty 
without  regard  to  man.  Therefore  the 
wonder  given  to  all  who  dare  call  to  them 
when  far  from  other  men. 

The  disrepute  of  the  pathetic  fallacy  has 

[100] 


FAR  ALTARS 

come  from  making  the  forest  sentimental. 
Sentient  beyond  all  doubt  its  lovers 
know  it  is.  Even  as  water  visibly  rebels, 
warring  with  headlands  and  leaping  after 
the  wind,  and  as  it  slumbers  dimpling  and 
caresses  the  swimmer,  so  the  woodlands 
are  solemn  and  aloof,  or  breathe  to  give 
the  open-hearted  their  vast  serenity.  The 
nymph  or  fairy  rises  at  the  bidding  of 
imagination,  but  the  everlasting  deities  of 
the  elements,  past  our  reckoning  elder 
than  they,  need  no  fiction.  They  are 
presences,  and  accord  communion.  They 
can  be  gentle  as  the  twilight  call  of  quail. 
They  can  be  indifferent  and  gigantic  as  the 
prairie  fire  and  typhoon.  But  they  brood 
to-day  as  yesterday  over  cities  that  they 
will  not  enter,  but  which  sometimes  they 
destroy.  They  march  above  mountain 
ridges  and  loiter  among  flowered  laurel, 
impartial  as  nothing  else  is,  and  in  their 
dispassionate  companionship  supremely 
consoling,  offering  for  playthings  the  ripple 
and  the  gleam. 


THE  END 


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